Limit Number of Results being returned in a List from Linq

Solution 1:

Use the Take function

int numberOfrecords=10; // read from user
listOfItems.OrderByDescending(x => x.CreatedDate).Take(numberOfrecords)

Assuming listOfItems is List of your entity objects and CreatedDate is a field which has the date created value (used here to do the Order by descending to get recent items).

Take() Function returns a specified number of contiguous elements from the start of a sequence.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb503062.aspx

Solution 2:

results = results.OrderByDescending(x=>x.Date).Take(10);

The OrderByDescending(...) will sort items by your date/time property (or w/e logic you want to use to get most recent) and Take(...) will limit to first x items (first being most recent, thanks to the ordering).

Edit: To return some rows not starting at the first row, use Skip():

results = results.OrderByDescending(x=>x.Date).Skip(50).Take(10);

Solution 3:

Use Take(), before converting to a List. This way EF can optimize the query it creates and only return the data you need.