Intersection of arrays in LINQ to CosmosDB - linq

Question

I'm trying find all items in my database that have at least one value in an array that matches any value in an array that I have in my code (the intersection of the two arrays should not be empty).
Basically, I'm trying to achieve this :
public List<Book> ListBooks(string partitionKey, List<string> categories)
{
return _client.CreateDocumentQuery<Book>(GetCollectionUri(), new FeedOptions
{
PartitionKey = new PartitionKey(partitionKey)
})
.Where(b => b.Categories.Any(c => categories.Contains(c))
.ToList();
}
With the Book class looking like this :
public class Book
{
public string id {get;set;}
public string Title {get;set;}
public string AuthorName {get;set;}
public List<string> Categories {get;set;}
}
However the SDK throws an exception saying that Method 'Any' is not supported when executing this code.
This doesn't work either :
return _client.CreateDocumentQuery<Book>(GetCollectionUri(), new FeedOptions
{
PartitionKey = new PartitionKey(partitionKey)
})
.Where(b => categories.Any(c => b.Categories.Contains(c))
.ToList();
The following code works because there's only one category to find :
public List<Book> ListBooksAsync(string category)
{
return _client.CreateDocumentQuery<Book>(GetCollectionUri())
.Where(b => b.Categories.Contains(category))
.ToList();
}
In plain SQL, I can queue multiple ARRAY_CONTAINS with several OR the query executes correctly.
SELECT * FROM root
WHERE ARRAY_CONTAINS(root["Categories"], 'Humor')
OR ARRAY_CONTAINS(root["Categories"], 'Fantasy')
OR ARRAY_CONTAINS(root["Categories"], 'Legend')
I'm trying to find the best way to achieve this with LINQ, but I'm not even sure it's possible.

Answer 1

In this situation I've used a helper method to combine expressions in a way that evaluates to SQL like in your final example. The helper method 'MakeOrExpression' below lets you pass a number of predicates (in your case the individual checks for b.Categories.Contains(category)) and produces a single expression you can put in the argument to .Where(expression) on your document query.
class Program
{
private class Book
{
public string id { get; set; }
public string Title { get; set; }
public string AuthorName { get; set; }
public List<string> Categories { get; set; }
}
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var comparison = new[] { "a", "b", "c" };
var target = new Book[] {
new Book { id = "book1", Categories = new List<string> { "b", "z" } },
new Book { id = "book2", Categories = new List<string> { "s", "t" } },
new Book { id = "book3", Categories = new List<string> { "z", "a" } } };
var results = target.AsQueryable()
.Where(MakeOrExpression(comparison.Select(x => (Expression<Func<Book, bool>>)(y => y.Categories.Contains(x))).ToArray()));
foreach (var result in results)
{
// Should be book1 and book3
Console.WriteLine(result.id);
}
Console.ReadLine();
}
private static Expression<Func<T,bool>> MakeOrExpression<T>(params Expression<Func<T,bool>>[] inputExpressions)
{
var combinedExpression = inputExpressions.Skip(1).Aggregate(
inputExpressions[0].Body,
(agg, x) => Expression.OrElse(agg, x.Body));
var parameterExpression = Expression.Parameter(typeof(T));
var replaceParameterVisitor = new ReplaceParameterVisitor(parameterExpression,
Enumerable.SelectMany(inputExpressions, ((Expression<Func<T, bool>> x) => x.Parameters)));
var mergedExpression = replaceParameterVisitor.Visit(combinedExpression);
var result = Expression.Lambda<Func<T, bool>>(mergedExpression, parameterExpression);
return result;
}
private class ReplaceParameterVisitor : ExpressionVisitor
{
private readonly IEnumerable<ParameterExpression> targetParameterExpressions;
private readonly ParameterExpression parameterExpression;
public ReplaceParameterVisitor(ParameterExpression parameterExpressionParam, IEnumerable<ParameterExpression> targetParameterExpressionsParam)
{
this.parameterExpression = parameterExpressionParam;
this.targetParameterExpressions = targetParameterExpressionsParam;
}
public override Expression Visit(Expression node)
=> targetParameterExpressions.Contains(node) ? this.parameterExpression : base.Visit(node);
}
}