Merging DataTables by Primary Key

In this blog we will learn how to provide Primary Key to C# DataTables and then merge them.

We often come across the need to merge DataTable.

In this blog, we are going to learn how to provide Primary Key to the DataTables and then merge them on the same basis.

DataTables with the following structure:

 

DataTable1:  

 

Source	Target	Name
4	1	Article
15	2	Blog
30	3	Code Snippet

 

DataTable2:

Target	Description
1	This is an article
2	This is a blog
3	This is a code snippet

 

We want the following output:

 

Final DataTable: 

Target	Source	Name	Description
1	4	Article	This is an article
2	15	Blog	This is a blog
3	30	Code Snippet	This is a code snippet

 

In order to do that, we provide Primary Key to the data tables in the following manner:

DataTable1.PrimaryKey = new DataColumn[] { DataTable1.Columns["TARGET"] };
DataTable2.PrimaryKey = new DataColumn[] { DataTable2.Columns["TARGET"] };
DataTable1.Merge(DataTable2);

Doing that you will get the required output in DataTable1.