Use LINQ to group a sequence by date with no gaps

Question

I'm trying to select a subgroup of a list where items have contiguous dates, e.g.

ID  StaffID  Title              ActivityDate
--  -------  -----------------  ------------
 1       41  Meeting with John    03/06/2010
 2       41  Meeting with John    08/06/2010
 3       41  Meeting Continues    09/06/2010
 4       41  Meeting Continues    10/06/2010
 5       41  Meeting with Kay     14/06/2010
 6       41  Meeting Continues    15/06/2010

I'm using a pivot point each time, so take the example pivot item as 3, I'd like to get the following resulting contiguous events around the pivot:

ID  StaffID  Title              ActivityDate
--  -------  -----------------  ------------
 2       41  Meeting with John    08/06/2010
 3       41  Meeting Continues    09/06/2010
 4       41  Meeting Continues    10/06/2010

My current implementation is a laborious "walk" into the past, then into the future, to build the list:

var activity = // item number 3: Meeting Continues (09/06/2010)

var orderedEvents = activities.OrderBy(a => a.ActivityDate).ToArray();

// Walk into the past until a gap is found
var preceedingEvents = orderedEvents.TakeWhile(a => a.ID != activity.ID);
DateTime dayBefore;
var previousEvent = activity;
while (previousEvent != null)
{
    dayBefore = previousEvent.ActivityDate.AddDays(-1).Date;
    previousEvent = preceedingEvents.TakeWhile(a => a.ID != previousEvent.ID).LastOrDefault();
    if (previousEvent != null)
    {
        if (previousEvent.ActivityDate.Date == dayBefore)
            relatedActivities.Insert(0, previousEvent);
        else
            previousEvent = null;
    }
}


// Walk into the future until a gap is found
var followingEvents = orderedEvents.SkipWhile(a => a.ID != activity.ID);
DateTime dayAfter;
var nextEvent = activity;
while (nextEvent != null)
{
    dayAfter = nextEvent.ActivityDate.AddDays(1).Date;
    nextEvent = followingEvents.SkipWhile(a => a.ID != nextEvent.ID).Skip(1).FirstOrDefault();
    if (nextEvent != null)
    {
        if (nextEvent.ActivityDate.Date == dayAfter)
            relatedActivities.Add(nextEvent);
        else
            nextEvent = null;
    }
}

The list relatedActivities should then contain the contiguous events, in order.

Is there a better way (maybe using LINQ) for this?

I had an idea of using .Aggregate() but couldn't think how to get the aggregate to break out when it finds a gap in the sequence.

Answer 1

Here's an implementation:

public static IEnumerable<IGrouping<int, T>> GroupByContiguous(
  this IEnumerable<T> source,
  Func<T, int> keySelector
)
{
   int keyGroup = Int32.MinValue;
   int currentGroupValue = Int32.MinValue;
   return source
     .Select(t => new {obj = t, key = keySelector(t))
     .OrderBy(x => x.key)
     .GroupBy(x => {
       if (currentGroupValue + 1 < x.key)
       {
         keyGroup = x.key;
       }
       currentGroupValue = x.key;
       return keyGroup;
     }, x => x.obj);
}

You can either convert the dates to ints by means of subtraction, or imagine a DateTime version (easily).