Linq to Entities over EF 4 on SQL Server 2005 - c#

'Cannot compare elements of type 'System.Collections.Generic.ICollection`1'. Only primitive types (such as Int32, String, and Guid) and entity types are supported.'
Entities & Relationships (Navigation Properties):
Case (1 <-> ∞) MeetingCase (1 <-> ∞) MeetingCaseOutcomes
The offending code is:
IQueryable<Case> cases; // this is obviously attached to a context and able to access data)
var broken = cases
.Where(c => c.MeetingCases
.Where(mc => mc.ExpectedStartDateTime <= DateTime.Now)
.Any(m => m.MeetingCaseOutcomes == null || m.MeetingCaseOutcomes.Count == 0));
I assume the problem is due to lack of support for the 'Any' operator, though I had thought this would work in EF 4 (since support for the related 'Contains' operator has been added).
How should I re-structure this call to produce what I want?
I have been working with EF for several months now and understand many of the runtime gotchas
UPDATE:
The Where clause above does contain a predicate, as follows:
c.MeetingCases.Where(mc => mc.ExpectedStartDateTime <= DateTime.Now)
.Any(m => m.MeetingCaseOutcomes == null || m.MeetingCaseOutcomes.Count == 0)
Because Any returns a boolean, the whole thing produces a predicate expression.
Also, the intent of this logic is to return a set of Case objects which do not have MeetingCaseOutcome records for any MeetingCase records where the meeting has already taken place (hence the comparison to DateTime.Now). This is part of a meeting scheduling system, and this is to check that Outcomes from each meeting are entered into the system following the meeting taking place.

EF 1 and EF 4 both support .Any(). The problem is that you're not using it enough. :)
IQueryable<Case> cases; // this is obviously attached to a context and able to access data)
var broken = cases
.Where(c => c.MeetingCases
.Where(mc => mc.ExpectedStartDateTime <= DateTime.Now)
.Any(m => !m.MeetingCaseOutcomes.Any()));

This part is the problem:
Where(c => c.MeetingCases
.Where..
.Where requires a Expression<Func<T,bool>>, in otherwords a predicate which returns true/false. But your supplying it a predicate which returns a sequence of elements.
I think that second .Where needs to be changed to .Any or .All.
I'm struggling to decipher what query your attempting to execute, but i'm assuming you want a list of Case where at least one associated MeetingCase has a ExpectedStartDateTime before today.
So your query should be:
var cases = cases
.Where(case => case.MeetingCases
.Any(caseMeeting => caseMeeting.ExpectedStartDateTime <= DateTime.Now));
I'm not sure what your trying to do with that last .Any clause.
Also - don't forget about eager-loading/projection problems. You say "it's attached to the context", which is fine - but c.MeetingCases will not return anything unless you have lazy loading on or are eager loading beforehand.

Related

My ForEach loop with a LINQ expression cannot be translated?

I need to go through all my chemicals and send out a warning to users if the expiration date is either 2 days away or 15 days away.
I have it set like that so the warning is sent out twice. Once 2 weeks before it expires, and once 2 days before it expires.
So I have this loop:
foreach (var chemical in _context.Chemical.Where(c => (c.DateOfExpiration - DateTime.Now).TotalDays == 15 || (c.DateOfExpiration - DateTime.Now).TotalDays == 2))
{
// send out notices
var base = _context.Base.Find(chemical.BaseId);
var catalyst = _context.Catalyst.Find(chemical.CatalystId);
_warningService.SendSafetyWarning(chemical, base, catalyst.Name);
}
But whenever I run it, I get this error:
System.InvalidOperationException: 'The LINQ expression 'DbSet<Chemical>
.Where(p => (p.DateOfExpiration - DateTime.Now).TotalDays == 15 || (p.DateOfExpiration - DateTime.Now).TotalDays == 2)'
could not be translated.
I'm not sure why it's giving me this error when I run it.
Is there a better way of doing what I'm trying to do?
Thanks!
DateTime.TotalDays returns a double.
You might have more luck changing your code to:
foreach (var chemical in _context.Chemical.Where(c => ((int)(c.DateOfExpiration - DateTime.Now).TotalDays == 15) || ((int)(c.DateOfExpiration - DateTime.Now).TotalDays == 2)))
{
// send out notices
var base = _context.Base.Find(chemical.BaseId);
var catalyst = _context.Catalyst.Find(chemical.CatalystId);
_warningService.SendSafetyWarning(chemical, base, catalyst.Name);
}
There are two solutions to this problem.
I'll first explain why it is throwing an error. EF is converting your code to an SQL Expression. When working with Expression you cannot parse in any C# code and expect it to work. EF needs to be able to translate it to SQL. That is why you are getting the exception saying that it can't translate your code.
When working directly in the Where clause on the DbSet or the DbContext you are actualy talking to the Where method for an IQueryable. Which has a parameter of Expression<Func<bool, T>> where T is your DbSet<T> type.
You either need to simplify your query so it can be translated to SQL. Or you can convert your IQueryable to an IEnumerable.
When you want to run your query on the SQL server, you need to use the first approach. But when you can run your query on the client you can use the second approach.
The first approached as mentioned by vivek nuna is using EntityFunctions. It might not be enough for your use case, because it has limited functionality.
The statement made that DateTime.Now is different on each iteratoion is not true. Because the query is converted once, it isn't running the query on every iteration. It simply doesn't know how to translate your query to SQL.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.data.objects.entityfunctions?view=netframework-4.8
The second approach means adding AsEnumerable after your DbSet. This will query all your data from your SQL server, and evaluate in C#. This is usually not recommended if you have a large data set. Example:
var chemicals = _context.Chemical.AsEnumerable(); // this will get the complete collection
chemicals.Where(i => i.Value == true); // everything will work now
And answer to a "better" approach. It's a bit cleaner code:
If you have navigation properties for your Base and Catalyst you can also include this in your query.
Note that you can still query server side before pulling everything client side using a Where on the _context.Chemical and then including and calling AsEnumerable.
var chemicals = _context.Chemical.Include(i => i.Base).Include(i => i.Catalyst).AsEnumerable();
foreach (var chemical in chemicals.Where(i => true)) // set correct where clause
{
_warningService.SendSafetyWarning(chemical, chemical.Base, chemical.Catalyst);
}
You can declare the variable before and then pass it to your expression. Like DateOfExpiration == nextFifteenDays …..
var nextFifteenDays = DateTime.Now.Adddays(15);
var nextTwoDays = DateTime.Now.AddDays(2);
Or you can use EntityFunctions.Diffdays
Reason for the error is well explained by #neil that DateTime.Now will keep on changing, so can’t be used.

Use skip and take inside a LINQ include

I have an object that has a property which is a collection of another object. I would like to load just a subset of the collection property using LINQ.
Here's how I'm trying to do it:
manager = db.Managers
.Include(m => m.Transactions.Skip((page - 1) * 10).Take(10))
.Where(m => m.Id == id)
.FirstOrDefault();
The code above throws an error that says
The Include path expression must refer to a navigation property defined on the type. Use dotted paths for reference navigation properties and the Select operator for collection navigation properties.\r\nParameter name: path
What is the right way to do this in LINQ? Thanks in advance.
You cannot do this with Include. EF simply doesn't know how to translate that to SQL. But you can do something similar with sub-query.
manager = db.Managers
.Where(m => m.Id == id)
.Select(m => new { Manager = m,
Transactions = db.Transactions
.Where(t=>t.ManagerId == m.Id)
.Skip((page-1) * 10)
.Take(10)})
.FirstOrDefault();
This will not return instance of Manager class. But it should be easy to modify it to suit your needs.
Also you have two other options:
Load all transactions and then filter in memory. Of course if there are a lot of transactions this might be quite inefficient.
Don't be afraid to make 2 queries in database. This is prime example when that is probably the best route, and will probably be the most efficient way of doing it.
Either way, if you are concerned with performance at all I would advise you to test all 3 approaches and see what is the fastest. And please let us know what were the results!
Sometimes the added complexity of putting everything in a single query is not worth it. I would split this up into two separate queries:
var manager = db.Managers.SingleOrDefault(m => m.Id == id);
var transactions = db.Transactions
.Where(t => t.ManagerId == id)
// .OrderBy(...)
.Skip((page - 1) * 10).Take(10)
.ToList();
Note that after doing this, manager.Transactions can be used as well to refer to those just-loaded transactions: Entity Framework automatically links loaded entities as long as they're loaded into the same context. Just make sure lazy loading is disabled, to prevent EF from automatically pulling in all other transactions that you specifically tried to filter out.

The linq query taking too much time. Need to reduce the Time

Here i am using the below query and its taking lots of time around 14 to 15 seconds for retrieving the large amount of data.
In below Query the CreatedDate is of DateTimeOffset data type.
var naId = UnitOfWork.SalesPhases.FirstOrDefault(p => p.PhaseName =="NA").SalesPhaseId;
var rejectedId = UnitOfWork.SalesPhases.FirstOrDefault(p => p.PhaseName =="Rejected").SalesPhaseId;
var data = UnitOfWork.Leads.Query().AsEnumerable()
.Where(p =>(p.SalesPhaseId == naId || p.SalesPhaseId == rejectedId) &&
p.CreatedDate.Date >= fromDate && p.CreatedDate.Date <= toDate).Select(m =>
new
{
m.LeadId,
m.LeadOwnerId,
m.SalesPhaseId,
m.LeadActivities,
m.Employee,
m.SalesPhase,
m.CompanyName,
m.CreatedDate,
m.LeadHistories,
m.LeadAddresses
}).ToList();
I tried using the AsQueryable instead of the AsEnumerable but it gives the below error:
"The specified type member 'Date' is not supported in LINQ to Entities. Only initializers, entity members, and entity navigation properties are supported."
Can you help me out to reduce the execution time of the query?
Your use of AsEnumerable is forcing the filtering to be done locally. It's pulling in all the data, then filtering it in your app. That's clearly very inefficient. Now, it seems that part of your query can't be directly expressed in LINQ to SQL. I see two options here.
Firstly you could do most of your filtering in SQL, but then do the date filtering locally:
var data = UnitOfWork.Leads.Query()
// Do this part of the query in SQL
.Where(p => p.SalesPhaseId == naId ||
p.SalesPhaseId == rejectedId)
.AsEnumerable()
// Do the rest of the query in-process
.Where(p => p.CreatedDate.Date >= fromDate &&
p.CreatedDate.Date <= toDate)
.Select(...)
That's suitable if the first part will filter it down massively, and then you only need to do local processing of a small set of data.
Alternatively, you could work out what your date filtering means in terms of DateTime. It looks like you could do:
// This may not be required, depending on the source.
fromDate = fromDate.Date;
// This will be, although you may be able to get rid of the ".Date" part.
toDate = toDate.Date.AddDays(1);
var data = UnitOfWork.Leads.Query()
// Do this part of the query in SQL
.Where(p => (p.SalesPhaseId == naId ||
p.SalesPhaseId == rejectedId) &&
p.CreatedDate >= fromDate &&
p.CreatedDate < toDate)
.Select(...)
That's created an equivalent query, but without using the Date property in the query itself.
Everything after AsEnumerable() is executed locally rather than on the server. See also
https://stackoverflow.com/a/2013876/141172
This means that all rows in the table are returned from the database, and then filtered in your C# code.
Remove that call so that the filtering happens server-side.
EDIT
Noticed Jon's comment and it reminded me that he reimplemented LINQ to Objects as a learning exercise. His comments about the AsEnumerable() reimplementation are worth reading
I can describe its behaviour pretty easily: it returns source.
That's all it does. There's no argument validation, it doesn't create another iterator. It just returns source.
You may well be wondering what the point is... and it's all about changing the compile-time type of the expression. I'm going to take about IQueryable in another post (although probably not implement anything related to it) but hopefully you're aware that it's usually used for "out of process" queries - most commonly in databases.
Now it's not entirely uncommon to want to perform some aspects of the query in the database, and then a bit more manipulation in .NET - particularly if there are aspects you basically can't implement in LINQ to SQL (or whatever provider you're using). For example, you may want to build a particular in-memory representation which isn't really amenable to the provider's model.
https://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2011/01/14/reimplementing-linq-to-objects-part-36-asenumerable.aspx
Your code should like this..
var naId = UnitOfWork.SalesPhases.FirstOrDefault(p => p.PhaseName =="NA").SalesPhaseId;
var rejectedId = UnitOfWork.SalesPhases.FirstOrDefault(p => p.PhaseName =="Rejected").SalesPhaseId;
var data = UnitOfWork.Leads.Query().AsQueryable()
.Where(p =>(p.SalesPhaseId == naId || p.SalesPhaseId == rejectedId) &&
p.CreatedDate>= fromDate.Date && p.CreatedDate <= toDate.Date).Select(m =>
new
{
m.LeadId,
m.LeadOwnerId,
m.SalesPhaseId,
m.LeadActivities,
m.Employee,
m.SalesPhase,
m.CompanyName,
m.CreatedDate,
m.LeadHistories,
m.LeadAddresses
}).ToList();
Firstly, You need to use .ToQueryable instead of .ToIEnumerable().
Secondly, you cannot use .Date to datetime properties inside a entity framework linq query. That only works for in-memory collections like list and arrays.

Searching Multiple Fields with LINQ Contains or Other

I'm using LINQ to search multiple fields on a single phrase and I'm using Contains() to do this. Up until today, when I noticed that the find method isn't working correctly.
So I'd like to be able to search each of the fields where there is any match. I've done some searching on Google and through SO and found suggestions of using Any()? Does anyone have any suggestions?
var l = _getData().Select(_marshallData).ToList();
return l.Where(x => x.Name.Contains(what) || x.Pumpkin.Contains(what) || x.Orange.Contains(what) || x.Tomato.Contains(what)).ToList();
Please excuse the stupid field names, I've had to change them for confidentiality.
Since you're materializing the data already you could do this:
var l = _getData().Select(_marshallData).AsEnumerable();
return l.Where(x => new[] { x.Name, x.Pumpkin, x.Orange, x.Tomato }.Any(s => s.Contains(what)));
But if you're using an ORM (like Entity Framework) this trick probably won't work (since there's a good chance this can't be converted to a SQL expression). In this case, you're original solution is fine, but it would probably be better to do this before you materialize the data.
return _getData()
.Where(x =>
x.Name.Contains(what) || x.Pumpkin.Contains(what) ||
x.Orange.Contains(what) || x.Tomato.Contains(what))
.Select(_marshallData)
.AsEnumerable();
Of course the field names here might be different, since the parameter x is probably a different type. Without further information, it's up to you to write this filter correctly.
Note that in both examples, I've eliminated the calls to ToList. Unless you absolutely need the result to a List<T> this is probably unnecessary.

WCF RIA - Query operator 'Count' is not supported

I'm trying the following code..
LoadOperation<Tasks> PhasesLP = context.
Load(context.GetTasksQuery().
Where(o=> ProjectList.Where(p=> p.ProjectID == o.ProjectID).Count() == 1)
I get the following error:
Query operator 'Count' is not supported.
I want to basically be able to specify a Where In clause instead of Where =.
Anyone has an idea of how I can achieve this?
Have you tried:
.SingleOrDefault() != null
I'm not familiar with RIA, but sometimes these kinds of alternate equivalent expressions work with EF.
Also, with EF, it's possible to do a SQL-style WHERE IN (...) using .Any(...).
Off the top of my head, this kind of thing works:
entities.Where(e => ids.Any(i => e.Id == i))
ids may be a list of IDs, another list of entities or a subquery, IIRC.

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