Sometimes you need to handle data in batches. With help of this extension method, all collections derived from an IEnumerable are easy to populate in batches. Note that this code needs to be placed in a static class, so in terms of VB.NET in a module.

Imports System.Runtime.CompilerServices
 
Public Module EnumerableExtensions
 
  [Extension]
  Public Iterator Function InBatches(Of T)(source As IEnumerable(Of T),
                       size As Integer) As IEnumerable(Of IEnumerable(Of T))
 
    Dim start As Integer = 0
 
    While start < source.Count()
        Yield source.Skip(start).Take(size)
        start += size
    End While
 
  End Function
 
End Module

If you take a closer look at the code you can see that you can provide a batch size. The method returns an IEnumerable(Of IEnumerable(Of)). It uses the LINQ extension methods Skip() and Take(). Quite simple. Beside of these extension methods, it uses also Iterators, so the consuming method can populate the result already in the first For.. Each. Consuming this method is even more simple. Assume that we have a collection of numbers. In this example simple created by the function GetNumbers(). But this could be every ‘list’ of objects. A list with Customers or all return values of a LINQ query.
 

Private Function GetNumbers() As List(Of Integer)
 
    Dim numbers As New List(Of Integer)
 
    For counter = 1 To 27
        numbers.Add(counter)
    Next
 
    Return numbers
 
End Function

Simply call the InBatches() extension method and loop trough all returned batches. 

' Get the list of numbers in batches of 5
Dim numbersInBatches = GetNumbers().InBatches(5)
 
' Loop trough the batches
For Each numbersInBatch In numbersInBatches
 
  ' Loop trough all elements in the batch
  For Each number In numbersInBatch
    Debug.Write(number.ToString() & "-")
  Next
 
  Debug.WriteLine("")
 
Next

This will be result in six batches. Five batches with five elements and and the last batch with the two elements left.

extensionmethodinbatchesvbnet