I've got a few tables that all have the same column domainID which basically just controls what data gets displayed on which website, as they share a database.
So when I go to databind a table to a control I would need to create a large switch to handle the different LINQ queries. I would like to create a utility method which takes the table type as a parameter and then return a where clause based on a column in passed table.
public static IEnumerable<T> ExecuteInContext<T>(
IQueryable<T> src)
{
int domain = 1;//hard coded for example
return src.Where(x => x.DomainID == domain);//Won't work, has to be a way to do this.
}
I'm stuck on the return code. You can't simply construct a where clause like I currently am because it doesn't know what table i'm talking about.
I'm trying to call that first method like this:
using (DataClasses1DataContext db = new DataClasses1DataContext())
{
var q = Utility.ExecuteInContext(db.GetTable<item>());
Repeater1.DataSource = q;
Repeater1.DataBind();
}
I hope this explains what I'm trying to do.
Edit: BrokenGlass's answer solved my problem. I would like to add that you need to open up your .dbml.cs file and extend the table/class with your interface. I also wanted to point out that the project wouldn't build if my column was nullable, it said it wasn't the same return type as my interface.
You have to restrict your T to a class that has a property of DomainID - you can add these interface implementations in partial classes that extend your data model.
public interface IFoo
{
int DomainId { get; set; }
}
..
public static IQueryable<T> ExecuteInContext<T>(IQueryable<T> src) where T: IFoo
{
int domain = 1;//hard coded for example
return src.Where(x => x.DomainID == domain);
}
Expression pe = Expression.Parameter(typeof(T));
Expression prope = Expression.Property(pe, "DomainID");
Expression ce = Expression.Equals(prope,
Expression.Constant((int)1);
Expression<Func<T,bool>> exp =
Expression.Lambda<Func<T,bool>>(
ce, pe);
return query.Where(exp);
You should be able to cast your generic parameter to the intended type...
public static IEnumerable<T> ExecuteInContext<T>(IQueryable<T> src)
{
int domain = 1;//hard coded for example
return src.Where(x => ((T)x).DomainID == domain);
}
But you realize you've created a generic method that assumes its type parameter will always expose a specific property? If you're going to do that, you should apply a generic type constraint such that T is always derived from a type that has that property...
For example:
public static IEnumerable<T> ExecuteInContext<T>(IQueryable<T> src) where T : IMyDomainObject
I'm not sure if I understand what you mean, but maybe you want to add a where clause:
public static IEnumerable<T> ExecuteInContext<T>(IQueryable<T> src)
where T: MyType //MyType exposing your DomainId
{
int domain = 1;//hard coded for example
return src.Where(x => x.DomainID == domain);//Won't work, has to be a way to do this.
}
Related
I have a project with TPT inheritance mapping, now I need to add it a search functionality that will find records in several tables. That's what I currently have:
public abstract class Customer
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Memo { get; set; }
...
}
public class Person : Customer
{
public string GivenName { get; set; }
public string Surname { get; set; }
...
}
public class Company : Customer
{
public string Name { get; set; }
...
}
I also have a unit of work with bunch of repositories, and I need to add the filtering functionality to several methods of CustomerRepository. Let's say I have a Count method with the following signature
public int Count(System.Linq.Expressions.Expression<Func<Customer, bool>> filter = null)
Now I need to get the quantity of customers whose GiveName or Surname contains searchTerm in case the customer is a Person or the same searchTerm in Name field in case it is a Company.
TL;DR
How a view with a single, searchable, paged list of Customers (containing both Person and Company types) should be implemented? I mean in terms of method with signature like public IHttpActionResult Get(string searchTerm, int pageSize, int pageNumber)...
That's what I tried:
I added to each of the classes a static method that would generate an Expression to search that specific class, that's how it looks for the Person class:
public static System.Linq.Expressions.Expression<Func<Person, bool>> GetFilter(string searchTerm)
{
if (String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(searchTerm))
{
return null;
}
var parameterExpression = System.Linq.Expressions.Expression.Parameter(typeof(Person));
System.Reflection.MethodInfo method = typeof(string).GetMethod("Contains", new[] { typeof(string) });
return System.Linq.Expressions.Expression.Lambda<Func<Person, bool>>(
System.Linq.Expressions.Expression.OrElse(
System.Linq.Expressions.Expression.Call(
System.Linq.Expressions.Expression.PropertyOrField(parameterExpression, "GivenName"),
method,
System.Linq.Expressions.Expression.Constant(searchTerm, typeof(string))
),
System.Linq.Expressions.Expression.Call(
System.Linq.Expressions.Expression.PropertyOrField(parameterExpression, "Surname"),
method,
System.Linq.Expressions.Expression.Constant(searchTerm, typeof(string))
)
), parameterExpression);
}
And tried to build an Expression that would check the type of the customer and then make an appropriate data check, but here I stumped... That's what I have right now:
var parameterExpression = System.Linq.Expressions.Expression.Parameter(typeof(Customer));
var typeIsPerson = System.Linq.Expressions.Expression.TypeIs(parameterExpression, typeof(Person));
var typeIsCompany = System.Linq.Expressions.Expression.TypeIs(parameterExpression, typeof(Company));
var q = System.Linq.Expressions.Expression.Block(
System.Linq.Expressions.Expression.IfThen(typeIsPerson, Person.GetFilter(searchTerm)),
System.Linq.Expressions.Expression.IfThen(typeIsCompany, Company.GetFilter(searchTerm)),
System.Linq.Expressions.Expression.Constant(false));
var a = System.Linq.Expressions.Expression.Lambda<Func<Customer, bool>>(
q, parameterExpression);
Here I have two problems(at least?), first when I try to call Count, I get a very unpleasant NotSupportedException exception that says Unknown LINQ expression of type 'Block'. The second is that I don't know how to return the result of execution for each of GetFilters, I suspect that I will get false for any record since it is default value that is the last Expression in my Block...
May be I'm on a wrong track and this is something that should be done in a completely different manner?
Expression blocks are generally unsupported in LINQ to Entities. And normally you don't need them because you could build almost any expression just using C# conditional operator ? : (which maps to Expression.Condition).
But before even trying to build an expression dynamically, you need to find a EF supported construct working with TPT (and other EF inheritance models) polymorphic query. Which is not so easy because all the examples use OfType method which is only applicable when you need to filter a concrete derived entities. With some trial and error, luckily there are two supported constructs - is and as (important: as, not cast!).
So the statically built predicate expression in question could be like this:
Expression<Func<Customer, bool>> predicate = c =>
c is Person ?
((c as Person).GivenName.Contains(searchTerm) || (c as Person).Surname.Contains(searchTerm)) :
c is Company ?
(c as Company).Name.Contains(searchTerm) :
false;
(Frankly you don't want to look at the generated SQL, but it works)
Now you can build it dynamically if you wish. You already found the is expression method (Expression.TypeIs), for as operator the corresponding expression metod is Expression.TypeAs.
You do not need to do all that. Just create a generic method that you will close when you call it. Your generic method can be like this:
public static int Count<T>(Expression<Func<T, bool>> filter = null)
{
var ctx = new StackContext();
return ctx.Customers.OfType<T>().Where(filter).Count();
}
You can call that like this:
// Here you are closing the generic to be of type Person
var personsCount = Count<Person>(x => x.GivenName == "George");
// Here you are closing the generic to be of type Customer
var companyCount = Count<Company>(x => x.Name == "Test");
I am retrieving some tuples from a database that are mapped to entity classes by means of Entity Framework.
For these entities, I have a key selector function (supplied at runtime by other developers) that I would like to pass to Queryable.OrderBy. The key selector function is provided upon "registration" of the entity type in my system - which happens by means of a method that looks roughly like this:
public void RegisterEntity<TEntity, TKey>(string entityName, TKey defaultKey, Func<TEntity, TKey> keySelectorFunc)
I would like to execute this OrderBy call before materializing the results to entity objects (i.e. in such a way that the OrderBy call still gets translated to SQL under the hood).
The problem is that the entities have composite keys, and thus, the key selector function will return a custom object instantiated in the function. You can imagine it like this:
var keySelectorFunc = e => new CustomKey(e.Value1, e.Value2);
As usual, Entity Framework does not like this (the usual "Only parameterless constructors and initializers are supported in LINQ to Entities" error).
Is there any way to use such a custom key selector function to return a custom key? Do I have to resort to anonymous classes? Or should I move the OrderBy call to a place after I have left the LINQ-to-Entities world?
In this particular case it would be easy to use Sort method of Generic List.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/3da4abas(v=vs.110).aspx
Sort method requires the type of the list to implement IComparable interface and it uses the implementation of CompareTo method from IComparable interface. Otherwise implementation of IComparer also can be passed to this method.
So if your entity class is already implemeting IComparable interface then this should surely work for you. You will have to to .ToList() on the IQueryable result of course before you can call the Sort method on it.
public class Category : IComparable<Category>
{
public int CategoryId { get; internal set; }
public string CategoryName { get; internal set; }
public int CompareTo(Category x)
{
return String.Compare(x.CategoryName, this.CategoryName, StringComparison.InvariantCulture);
}
}
List<Category> categories = new List<Category>();
categories.Add(new Category {CategoryName = "Cate1"});
categories.Add(new Category {CategoryName = "Cate2"});
categories.Sort();
foreach (var cat in categories)
{
Console.WriteLine(cat.CategoryName);
}
This displays me category names in reverse order based on the comparison logic I have written in the CompareTo method of Category Class.
In this case I think the best way is use a custom ExtensionMethod to avoid any overhead of coding or unnecessary complexity to do that.
See if it implementation can help you.
First we create your customkey class that is responsable to create the statement expressions:
class CustomKey
{
public CustomKey(params string[] value)
{
if(!value.Any())
throw new InvalidOperationException("Select at least one Property for this operation");
Values = new List<string>();
Values.AddRange(value);
}
private List<string> Values { get; set; }
// this method run throughout all property configured to create the expressions
public void ForEachProperty<TSource, TKey>(Action<Expression<Func<TSource, TKey>>, bool> method)
{
bool firstItem = true;
Values.ForEach(f =>
{
var expression = CreateExpression<TSource, TKey>(f);
method(expression, firstItem);
firstItem = false;
});
}
// this method is responsable to create each expression
Expression<Func<TSource, TKey>> CreateExpression<TSource, TKey>(string property)
{
var parameter = Expression.Parameter(typeof(TSource), "x");
var member = typeof(TSource).GetMember(property).FirstOrDefault();
Expression body = Expression.MakeMemberAccess(parameter, member);
return Expression.Lambda<Func<TSource, TKey>>(Expression.Convert(body, typeof(object)), parameter);
}
}
After that we create your custom ExtesionMethod, somethink like that:
public static class OrderByExtensionClass
{
// instead of try passing an expression, we pass our CustomKey object with the columns to sort.
// than this method create the apropriate OrderBy Expression statement
public static IOrderedQueryable<TSource> OrderBy<TSource>(this IQueryable<TSource> source, CustomKey customKey)
{
// the parameter isFirst is just to control where we are to build the expression
customKey.ForEachProperty<TSource, object>((expression, isFirst) =>
{
if (isFirst)
source = source.OrderBy(expression);
else
source = ((IOrderedQueryable<TSource>)source).ThenBy(expression);
});
return ((IOrderedQueryable<TSource>)source);
}
}
After that we just do:
CustomKey custom = new CustomKey("Name", "Age");
myEntityContext.People.OrderBy(custom).ToList()
I hope it can help you.
Part of the problem, I think, is that OrderBy wouldn't know what to do with a complex type. SQL Server knows how to order by primitive types, but that's about it. You would have to do something like ...OrderBy(x=>x.Field1).ThenBy(x=>x.Field2). You could write an extension method that takes the key, extracts the property names from the key, and builds the .OrderBy().ThenBy() expression, as long as you know what the key will be before executing the query. Otherwise yeah, you may have to materialize the results before ordering.
I am currently using one of the many repository patterns available online to perform CRUD operations with EF6. I am happy to use it as is but I have recently been handed a few legacy projects that have database tables with a very high number of columns. I would like a way to make my application as well as future applications smoother by devising a way to select only a subset of columns.
Current method.
public virtual TEntity Get(Expression<Func<TEntity, bool>> where,
params Expression<Func<TEntity, object>>[] navigationProperties)
{
TEntity item = null;
IQueryable<TEntity> dbQuery = this.Context.Set<TEntity>();
//Apply eager loading
foreach (Expression<Func<TEntity, object>> navigationProperty in navigationProperties)
dbQuery = dbQuery.Include<TEntity, object>(navigationProperty);
item = dbQuery
.AsNoTracking() //Don't track any changes for the selected item
.FirstOrDefault(where); //Apply where clause
return item;
}
I would like to enhance that method to retrieve only the columns I require but still return TEntity.
I do know I have to inject a Select after the '.AsNoTracking()' but I am unsure as to how I could pass the properties in as I am only starting out with Expression Trees.
In essence I would like to be able to do this.
public class Employee
{
public int EmployeeId { get;set; }
public string EmployeeRole { get;set; }
public string EmployeeFirstName { get;set; }
public string EmployeeLastName { get;set; }
public string DOB { get;set; }
...
}
Employee employee = EmployeeRepository.Get(where: e => e.EmployeeRole == "Developer",
columns: x => x.EmployeeFirstName, x => x.EmployeeLastName,
navigationProperties: null);
Where columns is a list of expressions specifying the columns to be added to the Select clause.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance...
Update.
I ended up with using a DTO to do the necessary querying and extraction as I couldn't find an elegant way to perform it generically. There was a solution developed by a colleague of mine but it made the repository far too complex and would have been hard to manage in the future.
So I create a StaffBasicInformation class to hold the subset of columns I use regularly. I also created an interface for it if I needed in the future. The below code sample shows the final implementation of retrieving data for the DTO.
public virtual IStaffBasicInformation GetStaffBasicInformation<TEntity2>(Expression<Func<TEntity2, bool>> where)
where TEntity2 : ActiveStaffMember
{
TEntity2 item = null;
StaffBasicInformation resultItem = null;
IQueryable<TEntity2> dbQuery = this.Context.Set<TEntity2>();
resultItem =
dbQuery.Where(where)
.Select(x => new StaffBasicInformation
{
GivenName = x.GivenName,
Department = x.Department,
Description = x.Description,
DisplayName = x.DisplayName,
Gender = x.Gender,
IID = x.IID,
Mail = x.Mail,
Title = x.Title,
ID = x.Id
})
.FirstOrDefault();
return resultItem;
}
Your return value will not be of type TEntity anymore after you have done the projection, it will be an anonymous type. You have to decide, if you want to map this anonymous type to an instance of TEntity, including mapping all navigationproperties, or return dynamic or object from your repository. Both choices are not very pleasant. Mapping would include a huge amount of reflection, which will not be very fast. By returning a dynamic type you loose all type safety. You have seen this problem allready i assume.
That said: You will need to build this expression manually. Based on this answer you can modify the
public static IQueryable SelectDynamic(this IQueryable source, IEnumerable<string> fieldNames)
to
public static IQueryable SelectDynamic(this IQueryable source, IEnumerable<Expression> fieldNames)
end extract the property names from the expressions. I would suggest to use an ExpressionVisitor for that, but you could also use the code from this answer
For the mapping you can compile the expressions and use the returned Func to retrieve the value from the anonymous type. After that you would need to use expression and find the hosting type for the selected property by using an ExpressionVisitor again. Then you will need to create a object of type of TEntity via Activator.CreateType(), and objects for every hosting type. Assign the value from Func(AnonymousType) to the created object of the hosting type using the property name from the expression. After that you have to determin the relationship between TEntity and the hosting type and build it up.
I will try to post some code tomorrow for this scenario, although i am quite sure there is a better and faster way.
Note: Please re-tag and/or re-name appropriately
I have a class, FooEnumerator, that wraps a Foo and implements IEnumerable<FooEnumerator>. The Foos represent a tree-like data structure, the FooEnumerators that are enumerated are the child nodes of the current node.
Foo is a vendor supplied data object. FooEnumerator implements a bunch of custom filtering code.
class FooEnumerator : IEnumerable<FooEnumerator>
{
public Foo WrappedNode { get; private set; }
public string Name { get { return WrappedNode.Name; } }
public int Id { get{ return WrappedNode.Id; } }
public DateTime Created { get{ return WrappedNode.Created; } }
public FooEnumerator(Foo wrappedNode)
{
WrappedNode = wrappedNode;
}
public IEnumerator<FooEnumerator> GetEnumerator()
{
foreach (Foo child in this.GetChildren())
if(FilteringLogicInHere(child))
yield return new FooEnumerator(child);
}
...
}
I want to be able to sort each level of the tree with a given (arbitrary) expression, defined when the top level FooEnumerator is created, and have this expression passed down to each newly enumerated item to use.
I'd like to define the sort expression using lambda's, in the same way you would with the OrderBy function. In fact, it is my intention to pass the lambda to OrderBy.
The signiture for OrderBy is
OrderBy<TSource, TKey>(Func<TSource, TKey> keySelector)
where TKey is the return type of the given Func, but is a Type Parameter in the method signature and is figured out at compile time.
Example usage
var x = GetStartingNode();
var sort = n => n.DateTime;
var enu = new FooEnumerator(x, sort);
var sort2 = n => n.Name;
var enu2 = new FooEnumerator(x, sort2);
The sort expression would then be stored in a class variable and FooEnumerator would work like:
// pseudo-implementation
private Expression<Func<Foo, TKey>> _sortBy;
public FooEnumerator(Foo wrappedNode, Expression<Func<Foo, TKey>> sortBy)
{
WrappedNode = wrappedNode;
_sortBy = sortBy;
}
public IEnumerator<FooEnumerator> GetEnumerator()
{
foreach (Foo child in this.GetChildren().OrderBy(_sortBy))
if(FilteringLogicInHere(child))
yield return new FooEnumerator(child);
}
How can I specify the type of TKey (implicitly or explicitly) in this use case?
I don't want to hard code it as I want to be able to sort on any and all properties of the underlying Foo.
Well, you can't create a member delegate variable of type Expression<Func<Foo,TKey>> since TKey is never specified. However, you could create a member of type Expression<Func<Foo,IComparable>> which may suffice for your purposes. You could need to change your FooEnumerator constructor to accept this signature as well, of course.
EDIT: Others have suggested parameterizing your FooEnumerator so that it accepts a TKey. You can certainly do this, but you should be aware of the issues that emerge:
By parameterizing the enumerator you are then kicking the bucket down the road. Any code that wants to store a FooEnumerator<T> has to have a-priori knowledge of the type T. You could, however, implement a non-generic interface IFooEnumerator to deal with that.
Parameterizing an enumerator creates issues if you want to support ordering on multiple fields in the future. C# doesn't support generics with a variable number of type parameters, which limits the creation of generics that require multiple arbitrary types. This issue is harder to deal with, since it's awkward to start creating FooEnumerator<T>, FooEnumerator<T1,T2>, FooEnumerator<T1,T2,T3...>, and so on.
You can also parameterize your Enumerator:
class FooEnumerator<TKey> {
// ... All your 'pseudo' code would work here
}
I recommend programming against the interface using IComparable however.
I'm trying to create a generic repository for my models. Currently i've 3 different models which have no relationship between them. (Contacts, Notes, Reminders).
class Repository<T> where T:class
{
public IQueryable<T> SearchExact(string keyword)
{
//Is there a way i can make the below line generic
//return db.ContactModels.Where(i => i.Name == keyword)
//I also tried db.GetTable<T>().Where(i => i.Name == keyword)
//But the variable i doesn't have the Name property since it would know it only in the runtime
//db also has a method ITable GetTable(Type modelType) but don't think if that would help me
}
}
In MainViewModel, I call the Search method like this:
Repository<ContactModel> _contactRepository = new Repository<ContactModel>();
public void Search(string keyword)
{
var filteredList = _contactRepository.SearchExact(keyword).ToList();
}
Solution:
Finally went with Ray's Dynamic Expression solution:
public IQueryable<TModel> SearchExact(string searchKeyword, string columnName)
{
ParameterExpression param = Expression.Parameter(typeof(TModel), "i");
Expression left = Expression.Property(param, typeof(TModel).GetProperty(columnName));
Expression right = Expression.Constant(searchKeyword);
Expression expr = Expression.Equal(left, right);
}
query = db.GetTable<TModel>().Where(Expression.Lambda<Func<TModel, bool>>(expr, param));
Interface solution
If you can add an interface to your object you can use that. For example you could define:
public interface IName
{
string Name { get; }
}
Then your repository could be declared as:
class Repository<T> where T:class, IName
{
public IQueryable<T> SearchExact(string keyword)
{
return db.GetTable<T>().Where(i => i.Name == keyword);
}
}
Alternate interface solution
Alternatively you could put the "where" on your SearchExact method by using a second generic parameter:
class Repository<T> where T:class
{
public IQueryable<T> SearchExact<U>(string keyword) where U: T,IName
{
return db.GetTable<U>().Where(i => i.Name == keyword);
}
}
This allows the Repository class to be used with objects that don't implement IName, whereas the SearchExact method can only be used with objects that implement IName.
Reflection solution
If you can't add an IName-like interface to your objects, you can use reflection instead:
class Repository<T> where T:class
{
static PropertyInfo _nameProperty = typeof(T).GetProperty("Name");
public IQueryable<T> SearchExact(string keyword)
{
return db.GetTable<T>().Where(i => (string)_nameProperty.GetValue(i) == keyword);
}
}
This is slower than using an interface, but sometimes it is the only way.
More notes on interface solution and why you might use it
In your comment you mention that you can't use an interface but don't explain why. You say "Nothing in common is present in the three models. So i think making an interface out of them is not possible." From your question I understood that all three models have a "Name" property. In that case, it is possible to implement an interface on all three. Just implement the interface as shown and ", IName" to each of your three class definitions. This will give you the best performance for both local queries and SQL generation.
Even if the properties in question are not all called "Name", you can still use the nterface solution by adding a "Name" property to each and having its getter and setter access the other property.
Expression solution
If the IName solution won't work and you need the SQL conversion to work, you can do this by building your LINQ query using Expressions. This more work and is significantly less efficient for local use but will convert to SQL well. The code would be something like this:
class Repository<T> where T:Class
{
public IQueryable<T> SearchExact(string keyword,
Expression<Func<T,string>> getNameExpression)
{
var param = Expression.Parameter(typeof(T), "i");
return db.GetTable<T>().Where(
Expression.Lambda<Func<T,bool>>(
Expression.Equal(
Expression.Invoke(
Expression.Constant(getNameExpression),
param),
Expression.Constant(keyword),
param));
}
}
and it would be called thusly:
repository.SearchExact("Text To Find", i => i.Name)
Ray's method is quite good, and if you have the ability to add an interface definitely the superior however if for some reason you are unable to add an interface to these classes (Part of a class library you can't edit or something) then you could also consider passing a Func in which could tell it how to get the name.
EG:
class Repository<T>
{
public IQueryable<T> SearchExact(string keyword, Func<T, string> getSearchField)
{
return db.GetTable<T>().Where(i => getSearchField(i) == keyword);
}
}
You'd then have to call it as:
var filteredList = _contactRepository.SearchExact(keyword, cr => cr.Name).ToList();
Other than these two options you could always look into using reflection to access the Name property without any interface, but this has the downside that there's no compile-time check that makes sure the classes you're passing actually DO have a Name property and also has the side-effect that the LINQ will not be translated to SQL and the filtering will happen in .NET (Meaning the SQL server could get hit more than is needed).
You could also use a Dynamic LINQ query to achieve this SQL-side effect, but it has the same non type-safe issues listed above.