Hash Maps in C#: Using Dictionary<TKey, TValue>

Hash Tables, better known as Hash Maps, are just collections of key-value pairs. In other words, they are pieces of data (values) mapped to unique identifiers called properties (keys).

Hash Maps were designed to give us a way of, given a key, associating a value with it for very quick lookups.

In Java, the Hash Map is implemented as a Dictionary

Creation:

You create an empty Hash Map by declaring an Map<keyType, valueType> and initializing it with using new Dictionary<>(), where the keyType and valueType are the data types of the keys and values.

Let's declare a Hash Map that maps text values represing digits to their numerical value (e.g. "two" => 2). We wil map strings to integers, so the two types are string and int. We will name the map digitValue

Map<string, int> digitValue = new Dictionary<>();

Creating an empty dictionary takes O(1) time.

Initialization:

You can also add some key-value pairs in your dictionary at creation:

Map<string, int> digitValue = new Dictionary<>() {{
    put("zero", 0);
    put("one", 1);
}};

Accessing values:

A value is retrieved from a map using the get() method:

Map<string, int> digitValue = new Dictionary<>() {{
    put("zero", 0);
    put("one", 1);
}};

// Accesing values:
digitValue.get("zero"); // returns  0

digitValue.get("one"); //  returns 1

digitValue.get("three"); // raises an exception since 'three' does not exist

digitValue.getOrDefault("three", 0); // returns 0 as the default value

As you can see, if you refer to a key that is not in the map, Java raises an exception. We can use getOrDefault to specify a default value in case it does not exist

Accessing a value from a map takes O(1) time.

Adding an entry:

We can add a key / value pair by using the put() method as follows:

Map<string, int> digitValue = new Dictionary<>() {{
    put("zero", 0);
    put("one", 1);
}};

// Adding new entries:
digitValue.put("three", 3);

//The new Hash Map:
// {
//	"zero": 0,
//  "one":  1,
//	"three": 3
//}

Adding a new entry to a map takes O(1) time.

Updating an entry:

We can update an existing entry by using the put() method as follows:

Map<string, int> digitValue = new Dictionary<>() {{
    put("zero", 0);
    put("one", 1);
}};

// updating entries:
digitValue.put("zero", 5);

//the new hash map:
// {
//	"zero": 5,
//  "one":  1
//}

Updating an entry from a map takes O(1) time.

Deleting entries:

The remove() method allows you to remove a key from a map:

Map<string, int> digitValue = new Dictionary<>() {{
    put("zero", 0);
    put("one", 1);
}};

// removing entries:
digitValue.Remove("zero");

//the new hash map:
// {
//  "one":  1
//}

If you try to delete a key that is not in the map, it won't do anything.

Deleting an entry from a map takes O(1) time.

Checking if a key exists:

You can check if a key exists in a map using the containsKey() method:

Map<string, int> digitValue = new Dictionary<>() {{
    put("zero", 0);
    put("one", 1);
}};


digitValue.containsKey("zero"); // returns true since the key exists

digitValue.containsKey("three"); // returns false since the key does not exist

Checking if a key exists in the map is O(1) time.

Iterating over the map keys:

If we want to iterate over keys of the map, we can use the for loop along with the : operator and the keySet() method as follows:

Map<string, int> digitValue = new Dictionary<>() {{
    put("zero", 0);
    put("one", 1);
}};

for (string key : digitValue.keySet()) {
    Console.WriteLine(key + " is " + digitValue.get(key));
}

// This will print:
// one is 1
// zero is 0

Notice the order is not the same as initiated. Dictionary keeps the data in random order

Iterating over a dictionary takes O(n) time.

Assignment
Follow the Coding Tutorial and let's play with some dictionaries.

Hint
Look at the examples above if you get stuck.