When to use .First and when to use .FirstOrDefault with LINQ?

Question

I've searched around and haven't really found a clear answer as to when you'd want to use .First and when you'd want to use .FirstOrDefault with LINQ.

• When would you want to use .First? Only when you'd want to catch the exception if no results where returned?

  var result = List.Where(x => x == "foo").First();
  

• And when would you want to use .FirstOrDefault? When you'd always want the default type if no result?

  var result = List.Where(x => x == "foo").FirstOrDefault();
  

• And for that matter, what about Take?

  var result = List.Where(x => x == "foo").Take(1);
  

Answer 1

I would use First() when I know or expect the sequence to have at least one element. In other words, when it is an exceptional occurrence that the sequence is empty.

Use FirstOrDefault() when you know that you will need to check whether there was an element or not. In other words, when it is legal for the sequence to be empty. You should not rely on exception handling for the check. (It is bad practice and might hurt performance).

Finally, the difference between First() and Take(1) is that First() returns the element itself, while Take(1) returns a sequence of elements that contains exactly one element.

Answer 2

.First will throw an exception when there are no results. .FirstOrDefault won't, it will simply return either null (reference types) or the default value of the value type. (e.g like 0 for an int.) The question here is not when you want the default type, but more: Are you willing to handle an exception or handle a default value? Since exceptions should be exceptional, FirstOrDefault is preferred when you're not sure if you're going to get results out of your query. When logically the data should be there, exception handling can be considered.

Skip() and Take() are normally used when setting up paging in results. (Like showing the first 10 results, and the next 10 on the next page, etc.)

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

.First() will throw an exception if there's no row to be returned, while .FirstOrDefault() will return the default value (NULL for all reference types) instead.

So if you're prepared and willing to handle a possible exception, .First() is fine. If you prefer to check the return value for != null anyway, then .FirstOrDefault() is your better choice.

But I guess it's a bit of a personal preference, too. Use whichever makes more sense to you and fits your coding style better.