C#.NET: Get Top and Bottom n Rows from DataTable using LINQ

LINQ, introduced in late 2007 is a way of querying data in arrays, lists, enumerable classes, XML, relational databases and anything built on these.This post explains how to get the top and bottom n number of  records from C# DataTable without looping through each row using LINQ queries. A LINQ query operation consists of three actions: obtain the data source or sources, create the query, and execute the query.

For this example let me create a datatable with three columns and four rows such as this,

            DataTable dt = new DataTable();
            dt.Columns.Add("Column1");
            dt.Columns.Add("Column2");
            dt.Columns.Add("Column3");
            dt.Rows.Add("A", "B", "C");
            dt.Rows.Add("D", "E", "F");
            dt.Rows.Add("G", "H", "I");
            dt.Rows.Add("J", "K", "L");

To get the top two rows use the following query,

DataTable dt1 = dt.AsEnumerable().Take(2).CopyToDataTable();

This will produce the following output when bound to a gridview,

Column1	Column2	Column3
A	B	C
D	E	F

To get the last two rows use the following query,

DataTable dt1 = dt.AsEnumerable().Reverse().Take(2).CopyToDataTable();

Output:

Column1	Column2	Column3
J	K	L
G	H	I

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