Get the earliest date in a LINQ expression

Question

I have the following LINQ in a WebAPI controller:

MyDate = i.Products.FirstOrDefault().Date

It works as expected. But, Products is a Collection, so there can be many dates. The above just selects the first one.

What I really want to do is to find the date, with the earliest time, and select that one.

How would that look?

Answer 1

If you only want the date and not the whole product, it's a little clearer to use Max or Min.

MyDate = i.Products.Select(x => x.Date).Max()

If you actually want the product, you'll need to sort by the date and then select the first one.

MyProduct = i.Products.OrderBy(x => x.Date).FirstOrDefault()

Answer 2

This way is more concise:

var earlyDate = i.Products.Min(p=>p.Date);

But you are sure that Product != null