Find all list items with multiple values used

 

I was working with Russ today and an interesting question came up:  If a user had a list with a multivalue column, how do we find all the list items with more than 1 value selected?

 

After much trial and error, LINQ was the simplest to implement.  Here's the list we used:

 

Testcol is a multi value column and thus our expected result was to return the Recipe #2 and Recipe #4 items.  Returning #3 or #1 was a fail.

 

On the backend, SharePoint splits it's values with a #; combination.  We can see this using the u2u CAML builder:

 

So the resultant code was a LINQ query with a split on the ;# values:

 

using (SPSite oSite = new SPSite("https://VM-SP2010/"))

            {

               using (SPWeb oWeb = oSite.RootWeb)

                {
           SPList oList = oWeb.Lists["TestList"];

                  List<SPListItem> items = (from l in oList.Items.OfType<SPListItem>() where l["Testcol"].ToString().Split(new[] { ";#" }, StringSplitOptions.None).Length > 3 select l).ToList<SPListItem>();

                  foreach (SPListItem item in items)

                    {

                     Console.WriteLine(item.DisplayName);

                    }

                }

            }

           Console.WriteLine("All done!");

           Console.ReadLine();

 

 

And the final result: