Is it possible to create ICriteria/ICriterion from LINQ or HQL? - linq

I am creating a method that can create filter understood by NHibernate (by filter i mean a set of ICriteria object for example) from my abstract filter object.
public static IEnumerable<ICriterion> ToNhCriteria(this MyCriteria criteria)
{
// T4 generated function
// lots of result.Add(Expression.Or(Expression.Eq(),Expression.Eq)) expression trees - hard to generate
// Is there a way to generate HQL/Linq query here istead?
}
then i want to do something like
session.CreateCriteria<Entity>().Add(myCriteria.ToNhCriteria())
to filter entities.
The problem is that using Expression. methods (Expression.Or etc) is quite tedious (the method is generated and i have multiple or statements that have to be joined into an expression somehow).
Is there a way to avoid using Expression.Or() and create ICrietrion / ICriteria using LINQ or HQL?

Hey, did you check out this question? It shows going from Linq to NHibernate to a MultiCriteria (and on the way transforms a linq query to an ICriteria)

No that is not possible. Why don't you use linq instead of criteria?

Linq is not the best solution unless you want to do filtering on collection-side not on datbase-side using WHERE clauses.
Ayende suggests that ICriteria API is well suited for dynamic filter creation, the problem i had with multiple ORs has been tackled by using Restrictions.Disjunction()... that simplified a lot
At the time I asked the question I just didn't realize such things exist in NHibernate :)

Related

LINQ- Update, Select and Delete as single query

I have a datatable (say myNameDT) which has data like this
Expected result:
When sector is Price, if it has fund value and component OTHER THAN "Active Return Contribution, It should update the Fundvalue in respective sector of Component Active Return Contribution. same applied for Index Value. Note: After update it should delete the unnecessary rows.
The result should look like,
Need as LINQ only. I have tried something as naive LINQ developer which is not fruitful. Thank you
What you're looking for is not feasible in a single LINQ statement. This is imposed not by LINQ itself but by the concept of SQL that LINQ relies on to perform operations on data. One of the things LINQ does, it lets you chain operations on the same dataset by combining them in a single query, however SELECTs cannot be combined with UPDATEs or DELETEs.
Finally, if what you're looking for is only syntactic sugar - this is not possible. If you are looking for a way to organize a set of data operations in a single TRANSACTION, you may want to look at these questions that give a hint on how LINQ interprets transaction operations:
TransactionScope vs Transaction in LINQ to SQL
How to create a LINQ to SQL Transaction?

LINQ Lambda Order in writing the query

I have the following query:
var query = db.Prog
.Where (a => a.Prog != "00000" && a.fn != "Koll")
.Select(a => new {a.Prog, a.MEfn})
.OrderByDescending(a => a.MEfn)
The query works fine but wondering if there are general rules on the order in which you write a Lambda linq query. Meaning, .Where comes before .Select, etc.
Can somebody enlighten me on the order in which LINQ needs to be written or best practices.
There isn't a best practice on the order in which you write a LINQ query, it will depend on if you want to do your filtering first, or your projection. For example in your case, you are projecting to an anonymous type which doesn't include the 'fn' property which your filter uses, so it wouldn't be available to use in a where clause if your select was first.
A better practice would be to give your properties less cryptic names. Also, 'fn' doesn't follow the PascalCase for property names, and if it's a field then it probably shouldn't be public.
Yours can be a good order.
Let's distinguish the case where db points to an SQL DB with a very good LINQ provider and the case db is an in-memory object. I guess it's the first.
In case you are using a LINQ to SQL provider, the statements are evaluated only when you materialize the query into an object, so the SQL optimizer (inside the DB) will take care of ordering of statements.
The vice versa occurs when your statements are run against in-memory collections or to materialized collections coming from LINQ to SQL. In that case they are executed sequentially, so you want to execute first those statements that reduce the number of results in the collection. Where is the best candidate!!!
The order that they should be in are completely dependent on the context of what you are doing. So if your OrderBy is simply formatting the data to be friendly to view, put it at the end after you have trimmed your collection, if your looking for the First value of a sorted collection then maybe you would need it before the collection is iterated to get the first.

Constructing dynamic linq queries based on user input

I am using dynamic linq on a project but don’t know how to run a particular query based on parameters. The example below shows the dynamic linq used to run 3 separate queries where a user has entered a filter expression or filer and sort expression etc. Without using if statements to check I (which seems incorrect and messy as I could end up with lots of if statements to cover the many different permutations ) I am unsure of how to generate the statements dynamically. Is this possible? I am running this query against Entity Framework.
context.Users.AsQueryable().Where(filterExpression)
context.Users.AsQueryable().Where(filterExpression).OrderBy(sortExpression)
context.Users.AsQueryable()Take(10).Where(filterExpression).OrderBy(sortExpression)
That should be achieved using expression tree only or may be using if..else clause
How to: Use Expression Trees to Build Dynamic Queries (C# and Visual Basic)

Linq, what is difference in returning data in var, list, IEnumerable and IQueryable?

I am new to Linq please guide me on some basic things.
In read some articles on Linq. Some authers fill data in var from Linq query, some fills list of custom type objects and some fills data in IEnumerable and some do it in IQuryable. I could not get what is difference in these 4 and which one should be used in which situation.
I want to use Linq to SQL. What should I use?
Well, you can never declare that a method returns var - it's only valid for local variables. It basically means "compiler, please infer the static type of this variable based on the expression on the right hand side of the assignment operator".
Usually a LINQ to Objects query will return an IEnumerable<T> if it's returning a sequence of some kind, or just a single instance for things like First().
A LINQ to SQL or EF query will use IQueryable<T> if they want further query options to be able to build on the existing query, with the added bits being analyzed as part of the SQL building process. Alternatively, using IEnumerable<T> means any further processing is carried out client-side.
Rather than focusing on what return type to use, I suggest you read up on the core concepts of LINQ (and the language enhancements themselves, like var) - that way you'll get a better feel for why these options exist, and what their different use cases are.

Linq to Nibernate design

I thought that the purpose of using Linq2Nibernate was to return IQueryable and build up an expression tree. I am not sure if this is correct or not.
Why would anyone use Linq2Nibernate if they are not going to return IQueryable?
What else would it be used for?
I would love some more input on this topic
Linq For Nhibernate
I'm planning to use NHibernate.Linq to replace my HQL and criteria API queries with LINQ expressions. In other words, I'll generate the query in code (as a LINQ expression) and then pass it to NHibernate.Linq and NHib to convert it into a database query.
FYI there is an alpha version available.
I have planed to start using Linq2Nibernate but haven't got round to i yet.
My reason for wanting to user Linq2Nibernate is the nice syntax when constructing criterions and later querying them out.
Here is a nice simple example.
http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2007/03/16/Linq-for-NHibernate.aspx
I am using Linq2Nhibernate with my repository pattern that returns IQueryable objects.
As you know, IQueryable is only a query definition - doesn't touch database yet.
Then local requirements are added to the query and finally the object or list is materialized.
Seems to work excellent and prevents unnecessary db queries for partial data at higher abstract layers.
What's Linq2NHibernate? As there are several projects which tried to implement a linq provider for nhibernate but all stopped before reaching completion.
Any linq provider needs to return IQueryable, or better an IEnumerable as that's how linq works. It's convenient to return an IQueryable as you then can re-use existing code to pad additional operators to an already created query (as ctx.Employee which might return IQueryable is already a query)

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