Recursive List Flattening

Here’s an extension that might help. It will traverse all nodes in your hierarchy of objects and pick out the ones that match a criteria. It assumes that each object in your hierarchy has a collection property that holds its child objects.

Here’s the extension:

/// Traverses an object hierarchy and return a flattened list of elements
/// based on a predicate.
/// 
/// TSource: The type of object in your collection.</typeparam>
/// source: The collection of your topmost TSource objects.</param>
/// selectorFunction: A predicate for choosing the objects you want.
/// getChildrenFunction: A function that fetches the child collection from an object.
/// returns: A flattened list of objects which meet the criteria in selectorFunction.
public static IEnumerable<TSource> Map<TSource>(
  this IEnumerable<TSource> source,
  Func<TSource, bool> selectorFunction,
  Func<TSource, IEnumerable<TSource>> getChildrenFunction)
{
  // Add what we have to the stack
  var flattenedList = source.Where(selectorFunction);

  // Go through the input enumerable looking for children,
  // and add those if we have them
  foreach (TSource element in source)
  {
    flattenedList = flattenedList.Concat(
      getChildrenFunction(element).Map(selectorFunction,
                                       getChildrenFunction)
    );
  }
  return flattenedList;
}

Examples (Unit Tests):

First we need an object and a nested object hierarchy.

A simple node class

class Node
{
  public int NodeId { get; set; }
  public int LevelId { get; set; }
  public IEnumerable<Node> Children { get; set; }

  public override string ToString()
  {
    return String.Format("Node {0}, Level {1}", this.NodeId, this.LevelId);
  }
}

And a method to get a 3-level deep hierarchy of nodes

private IEnumerable<Node> GetNodes()
{
  // Create a 3-level deep hierarchy of nodes
  Node[] nodes = new Node[]
    {
      new Node 
      { 
        NodeId = 1, 
        LevelId = 1, 
        Children = new Node[]
        {
          new Node { NodeId = 2, LevelId = 2, Children = new Node[] {} },
          new Node
          {
            NodeId = 3,
            LevelId = 2,
            Children = new Node[]
            {
              new Node { NodeId = 4, LevelId = 3, Children = new Node[] {} },
              new Node { NodeId = 5, LevelId = 3, Children = new Node[] {} }
            }
          }
        }
      },
      new Node { NodeId = 6, LevelId = 1, Children = new Node[] {} }
    };
  return nodes;
}

First Test: flatten the hierarchy, no filtering

[Test]
public void Flatten_Nested_Heirachy()
{
  IEnumerable<Node> nodes = GetNodes();
  var flattenedNodes = nodes.Map(
    p => true, 
    (Node n) => { return n.Children; }
  );
  foreach (Node flatNode in flattenedNodes)
  {
    Console.WriteLine(flatNode.ToString());
  }

  // Make sure we only end up with 6 nodes
  Assert.AreEqual(6, flattenedNodes.Count());
}

This will show:

Node 1, Level 1
Node 6, Level 1
Node 2, Level 2
Node 3, Level 2
Node 4, Level 3
Node 5, Level 3

Second Test: Get a list of nodes that have an even-numbered NodeId

[Test]
public void Only_Return_Nodes_With_Even_Numbered_Node_IDs()
{
  IEnumerable<Node> nodes = GetNodes();
  var flattenedNodes = nodes.Map(
    p => (p.NodeId % 2) == 0, 
    (Node n) => { return n.Children; }
  );
  foreach (Node flatNode in flattenedNodes)
  {
    Console.WriteLine(flatNode.ToString());
  }
  // Make sure we only end up with 3 nodes
  Assert.AreEqual(3, flattenedNodes.Count());
}

This will show:

Node 6, Level 1
Node 2, Level 2
Node 4, Level 3