Split string with LINQ - c#

I want to order by my results with the matches count in my string line.
So here is code
.ThenByDescending(p => p.Title.ToLower()
.Split(' ')
.Count(w => words.Any(w.Contains)));
But it bring me error and says that LINQ can't parse Split into SQL.
LINQ to Entities does not recognize the method 'System.String[]
Split(Char[])' method, and this method cannot be translated into a
store expression.
How can I implement Split via LINQ?
For example, for this array it must order in this way
words = { "a", "ab" }
ab a ggaaag gh //3 matches
ba ab ggt //2 matches
dd //0 matches

it means that Linq to entities failed to find translation of split method that can be written as sql query. if you want to perform split functions you have to bring the record in memory by calling ToList(), AsEnumerable() etc.
var result = (from t in db.Table
select t).AsEnumerable().OrderBy(x=>x.Column).ThenByDescending(p=>p.Title.ToLower.Split(' ')....);

You will need to perform the sorting in LINQ to Objects because LINQ to Entities cannot translate the C# code into SQL (or the language of whatever DB you're using).
You can do it like this.
var results =
objectContext
.Where(a => a == b) //Whatever
.AsEnumerable()
.ThenByDescending(p=>p.Title.ToLower().Split(' ').Count(w=>words.Any(w.Contains)));
AsEnumerable() (along with ToArray() or ToList()) turn the LINQ to Entities back into LINQ to Objects.

One can't expect LINQ to Entities to be able to convert that to SQL.
The best solution is to change the schema such that each word in a post's title is stored as a separate row in a separate table (with the appropriate associations). The query can then use explicit (group) join operations or the FK association property.
If you can't do this and yet want the query to run on the database, you'll have to look into writing a user-defined function to work with delimited strings. Read this question for more info. This will be a lot of work though.
The easiest solution (if you can afford to do it) of course is to pull everything back to the client just use LINQ to Objects for that part of the query, as mentioned by #Muhammad Adeel Zahid.

Related

Compare local list to DataBase

I have a local List with entities, some hundreds, and I have a SQL Server table where I store the ID of the successful processed entities, some millions. I would like to know, which entities form my local set are not yet processed i.e. are not in the SQL Table.
The first approach is to iterate through the local list with the following Linq statement:
Entity entity = db.Entities.FirstOrDefault(m => m.ID == ID);
if (entity == null) { NewList.Add(ID) }
the NewList would then contain all the new entities. However this is very slow.
In LINQ, how would you send the entire local list to the SQL Server with one call and then return the ones not in the SQL table?
Do you really have to create a temporary table with my local list, then left-join on the already processed table and return the ones with a null?
Use .Contains method to retrieve already processed ids
and Except to create list of not yet processed ids.
var localList = new List<int> { 1, 2, 3 };
var processed = db.Entities
.Where(entity => localList.Contains(entity.Id))
.Select(entity => entity.Id)
.ToList();
var notProcessed = localList.Except(processed).ToList();
It will depend on provider, but .Contains should generate sql like:
SELECT Id FROM Entity WHERE Id IN (1, 2, 3)
suggestion:
create a temp table and insert your IDs
select your result on the SQL side
EDIT:
"Can you do that in LINQ?"
TL;DR:
yes* but that's an ugly piece of work, write the SQL yourself
*)depends on what you mean with "in" LINQ, because that is not in the scope of LINQ. In other words: a LINQ expression is one layer too abstract, but if you happen to have an LINQ accessible implementation for this, you can use this in your LINQ statements
on the LINQ expression side you have something like:
List<int> lst = new List<int>() { 1,2,3 };
List<int> result = someQueryable.Where(x=>lst.Contains(x.ID)).Select(x=>x.ID).ToList();
the question now is: what happens on the SQL side (assuming the queryable leads us to a SQL database)?
the queryable provider (e.g. Entity Framework) somehow has to translate that into SQL, execute it and come back with the result
here would be the place to modify the translation...
for example examine the expression tree with regard to the object that is the target for the Contains(...) call and if it is more than just a few elements, go for the temp table approach...
the very same LINQ expression can be translated into different SQL commands. The provider decides how the translation has to be done.
if your provider lacks support for large Contains(...) cases, you will probably experience poor performance... good thing is usually nobody forces you to use it this way ... you can skip linq for performance optimized queries, or you could write a provider extension yourself but then you are not on the "doing something with LINQ"-side but extending the functionality of your LINQ provider
if you are not developing a large scalable product that will be deployed to work with different DB-Backends, it is usually not worth the effort... the easier way to go is to write the sql yourself and just use the raw sql option of your db connection

How to filter and order collection in C#?

Here is the code:
public ActionResult Index()
{
var crView = db.CRCases.ToList();
return View(crView);
}
Would like to filter like we have in sql statement using WHERE and ORDER BY.
Is there any good reference on how to apply it?
linq is your friend here.
you can do
crView = crView.Where(x => x.yourPredicate).OrderBy( y => y.OrderClause);
CRCases should be a DBSet<T>. You can use LinQ like this :
db.CRCases.Where(x => x.TheProperty =xxx).ToList()
You can use LINQ = Language Integrated Query.
This have two different notations:
Functional: you can change several function calls beginning on an IEnumerable.
db.CrCases.Where(predicate).OrderBy(sortExpression)
"SQL like": it really looks like an "unordered SQL".
from crCase in db.CrCases where condition orderby sortExpression select crCase
The condition and sort expression in the first notation require lambda expressions (you can see them in action here). In the second case the condition is expressed.
Most of the queries can be written either way.
You'll usually use var to store the query, and materialize it later.
var query = from crCase in db.CrCases
where condition orderby sortExpression
select crCase
CrCase firstCase = query.Firts();
List<CrCase> cases = query.ToList();
There are several flavors of LINQ. They all look equal on the surface, but are translated into another thing. For example:
LINQ to objects: it's the more general, an allows to make queries on collections. Tis is what you'll use for this particular case.
LINQ to SQL: this allows to write queries in C# which are transalated to SQL queries in the underlying database
LINQ to Entities: similar to the previous, but you make your queries to an Entity Framework model, and the queries are finally transalated to the DB
There are some others flavors of LINQ. And, in fact, you can create your own, but that's not easy.
Finally, you have to take into account that a LINQ query isn't executed until you materialize it. I.e. it's not executed until you try to get data from it (converting it ToList(), ToArray() or whatever, enumerating it, or accesing any of it's data First(), Sum(), Count()). Depending on the flavor, the executing can be running C# code (LINQ to objects) or run a SQL Query in a DB (LINQ to SQL) or whatever.
Here you have a great place to learn how to use LINQ:
LINQ 101

LINQ can't use string.contains?

This is my code:
string queryString = "Marco".ToLower();
utenti = db.User.Where(p =>
queryString.Contains(p.Nickname.ToLower()) ||
queryString.Contains(p.Nome.ToLower()) ||
queryString.Contains(p.Cognome.ToLower())).ToList();
but I get:
Only arguments that can be evaluated on the client are supported for the String.Contains method.
Why? Can't I use .Contains()?
Try .IndexOf. It is not LINQ that can't do Contains, it's LINQ to Entities and LINQ to SQL that can't.
string queryString = "Marco";
utenti = db.User.Where(p =>
queryString.IndexOf(p.Nickname, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) >= 0 ||
queryString.IndexOf(p.Nome, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) >= 0 ||
queryString.IndexOf(p.Cognom, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCasee) >= 0)
.ToList();
Why?
LINQ uses deferred execution. This means it waits until you want to iterate over your query results before it does anything. There are 3 main types of LINQ:
LINQ to Objects - when your IEnumerable is already on the heap.
LINQ to Entities - when you want to query a database using Entity Framework.
LINQ to SQL - when you want to query a database using LINQ to SQL.
Deferred execution in the context of the second 2 means that your query is not executed on the database until you enumerate the results in a foreach block, or invoke an enumeration method like .ToList, .ToArray, etc. Until then, your query is just stored as expression trees in memory.
Your query would work just peachy if db.User was a collection in memory. However when the data is in a database, LINQ to Entities (or LINQ to SQL) must translate your expression trees to what it calls a "store expression" -- which is just fancy talk for "convert my LINQ expressions to SQL".
Now imagine you had a custom C# algorithm you wanted to use for your query, and you did something like this:
var result = db.User.Where(x => MyCustomMethod(x));
There is no way today that LINQ to Entities can convert your C# code into a SQL query (store expression). It is the same with a lot of other C# methods you rely on daily. It also does not support .ToLower, .ToUpper, .StartsWith, .EndsWith, etc. There is a limited number of C# methods that can be converted to store expressions, and .IndexOf just happens to be one of them.
However keep in mind that it is only the string object's Contains method that we are talking about here that is not supported for store expressions. LINQ to Entities does support .Contains on IEnumerables. The following is valid and will work with LINQ to Entities (not sure about LINQ to SQL):
var idsIWantToFind = new[] { 1, 2, 3 };
var users = db.Where(x => idsIWantToFind.Contains(x.UserId));
The above is the equivalent of doing a SQL WHERE UserId IN (1, 2, 3) predicate.

Are different IQueryable objects combined?

I have a little program that needs to do some calculation on a data range. The range maybe contain about half a millon of records. I just looked to my db and saw that a group by was executed.
I thought that the result was executed on the first line, and later I just worked with data in RAM. But now I think that the query builder combine the expression.
var Test = db.Test.Where(x => x > Date.Now.AddDays(-7));
var Test2 = (from p in Test
group p by p.CustomerId into g
select new { UniqueCount = g.Count() } );
In my real world app I got more subqueries that is based on the range selected by the first query. I think I just added a big overhead to let the DB make different selects.
Now I bascilly just call .ToList() after the first expression.
So my question is am I right about that the query builder combine different IQueryable when it builds the expression tree?
Yes, you are correct. LINQ expressions are lazily evaluated at the moment you evaluate them (via .ToList(), for example). At that point in time, Entity Framework will look at the total query and build an SQL statement to represent it.
In this particular case, it's probably wiser to not evaluate the first query, because the SQL database is optimized for performing set-based operations like grouping and counting. Rather than forcing the database to send all the Test objects across the wire, deserializing the results into in-memory objects, and then performing the grouping and counting locally, you will likely see better performance by having the SQL database just return the resulting Counts.

Linq query run over list of parameters

I have a requirement to create a linq query that selects data from a database table where a certain functional result is true.
I am using linq-to-sql and the function works well and I can write a basic query to get the data.
My issue is that I have an in-memory list of parameters and I essentially need to run the linq query multiple times (once for every parameter list item) and aggregate the results.
I have tried using the .Any() as a join but linq doesn't like joining non-database result sets with database result sets.
Some Sample Code:
Parameter list: // lets call it "l"
{
One,
Two,
Three
}
Query
From w in words where funcWord(l.item) == true select w;
So I would require a query that can run the above query once for every item in l and aggregate the results.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks.
Multiple from statements will go through every combination, sort of like nested foreach statements:
from item in list
from w in words
where funcWord(item, w.name) == true
select w;
Interestingly, this gets translated to a SelectMany statement that is similar to Arithmomaniac's answer.
Try SelectMany, which aggregates the result of a one-to-many function, applied to each member.
In this case, the members are the elements of list, and the one-to-many function is your above, l-dependent query (though I rewrote it as a lambda function.)
list.SelectMany(l => words.Where(w => funcWord(l.item, w.name)));

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