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9 Rules for Clean LINQ Queries
Make your LINQ Queries as readable as a good book
In my most recent article on how to write readable code, I mentioned that good LINQ Queries are way more readable and a good replacement, than any kind of loops in most cases. For beginners, LINQ might take a few days to learn, but I found, that I am still improving on how I write my LINQ queries six years after first learning of them.
In this article, I am going to present you a few rules to stick to when writing LINQ queries. These rules will make your queries readable like a book.
1. Break After Each Statement
Breaking your code can change the look of your code from a pile of garbage to a beautiful artwork. I found, that you can read code faster vertically, than horizontally. As a result, I break at least all lines of code, that would go beyond half the screen. For LINQ queries, I even break them before every dot. This makes them way better readable and the logic gets more clear, as you can see below:
2. Indent Each Nested Layer
After breaking your code, you sometimes need to adjust the indentation level of your code-line, as your IDE might not do it for you. I found it feasible to indent each nested layer by one more indentation level, as shown here:
The constructor of ReceivedMessage is a new logical layer, which gets a new indentation level, and optionally you can also break and indent your arguments.
Don’t forget to break your closing brackets and move them to the same indentation level as your opening bracket. This way, you see very quickly, where a statement ends and a new — with the same indentation level — is beginning.
