Dictionary Structure

Question

I am brand new to dictionaries and coding and am hoping to get some suggestions on how I should structure my dictionary.

I have a collector number which has meters connected to them. Each of the meters have a meter number and a ert number and would like to store both the meter and ert number. There will be a list of meter reading timestamps and values for each of the meters. Also, I would like to be able to select the values by either the ert number or meter number. I have attached the current structure I have for the dictionary but was wondering if this was the best way to format the dictionary. Someone had suggested objects but I have never worked with objects before.

{
Dictionary<Int32, Dictionary<string, Meter>> dictionary = new Dictionary<int, Dictionary<string, Meter>>();

if (!dictionary.ContainsKey(objectID))
{
    dictionary.Add(objectID, new Dictionary<string, Meter>());
}

Meter meter = new Meter();
meter.ertNumber = "9480:1";
meter.meterNumber = "fsadfa";
meter.Reading = new Dictionary<Int32, double>();
meter.Reading.Add(0, 6);

dictionary[objectID].Add("Test", meter);
}

class Meter
{
    public String ertNumber { get; set; }
    public String meterNumber { get; set; }
    public Dictionary<Int32, double> Reading { get; set; }
}

Answer 1

If you have a collection of Meters and you want to be able to find the ONE based on a property, this is how I would do it:

Create a List of Meters, say l..

List<Meter> l = new List<Meter>();

Then implement Extension methods like so..

public static class MeterExt
{
    public static Meter GetByErm(this List<Meter> l, String sErm)
    {
        Meter r = l.Find(s => s.ertNumber == sErm);

        return r;
    }

    public static Meter Get(this List<Meter> l, String sMeter)
    {
        Meter r = l.Find(s => s.meterNumber == sMeter);

        return r;
    }
}

Then you can find your meter like so..

Meter m = l.Get("fsadfa");