How to find a file with name = X in a SPList

Question

Looking for recommendations. Have a file in a document library with name x.txt. In a workflow code behind, I need to get the file to read its contents. What is the best/most efficient way to do this? Was thinking a linq query on the SPList.Item collection but might be off.

Answer 1

I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, but if you have the list, you could get your item like this

var myItem = myList.Items.Cast<SPListItem>().Where(n => n.File.Name == "x.txt").FirstOrDefault();

Answer 2

If you use linq to object, you always retrieve ALL records from DB. It is not good if you have got a lot of data. To reduce records you can use CAML query:

SPQuery query = new SPQuery();    
query.Query = "<Where>" +
                    "<Eq>" +
                         "<FieldRef Name=\"FileLeafRef\"/>" +
                         "<Value Type=\"Text\">" + fileName + "</Value>" +
                    "</Eq>" +
                "</Where>";
SPListItem item = list.GetItems(query).FirstOrDefault();

In this case items are selected from DB by query and then you can get first item.