CloudEventAttribute should implement equality operators

CloudEvent.GetPopulatedAttributes() returns an IEnumerable<KeyValuePair<CloudEventAttribute, object>> which is actually a bit odd. You’d think it would be usable as a dictionary, but I’m guessing there might be a cause where the same attribute names appear more than once, but in my case, I know they won’t, so I tried to create a dictionary from it, but unfortunately, since the Key is CloudEventAttribute, indexing it requires equality operators. Even if I simply search the list of KVPs, it makes it awkward to find an attribute that may or may not exist (SingleOrDefault for example, because default is a KVP with null values), so I think I have to loop on it the old fashioned way.

I find the interface in general to be very awkward, but I think some comparison operators would be helpful, or even a helper method that can grab the attribute and/or value by name. There’s already a method to get the attribute, there’s just no value in it; it’s only the name. Maybe there’s some other incantation I’m not seeing; the documentation on extension attributes is lacking in general.

[jskeet]

Okay. I’ll keep going with the IEqualityComparer PR then. That would allow something like:

Dictionary<CloudEventAttribute, object> dict = new(ce.GetPopulatedAttributes(), CloudEventAttribute.NameComparer);

[jskeet]

We could add extension methods for that easily without a new collection type. Anyway, will look more carefully on Monday.