Question

I am implementing a search where I would like to partially match an entity’s primary key. For example, if I would search for “123” it would return entities which have primary keys like:

• 12345
• 67123
• 91234

If this were a string, I’d attack it like this:

    public PartialViewResult QuickSearch(string searchTerm)
    {
        var results = db.MyEntities.Where(x => x.myProperty.Contains(searchTerm));
        return PartialView("QuickSearch_Results", results);
    }

However I’m at a loss on the best way to do this for an int. I’m looking for something like this:

    public PartialViewResult QuickSearch(int id)
    {
        var results = db.MyEntities.Where(x => x.myPropertyId.Contains(int));
        return PartialView("QuickSearch_Results", results);
    }

But obviously contains is not the right way to go. What would be a correct way of implementing this?

Answer 1

Totally wild and untested guess using the StringConvert method:

public PartialViewResult QuickSearch(int id)
{
    string sId = id.ToString();
    var results = 
        from x in db.MyEntities
        where SqlFunctions.StringConvert((double)x.myPropertyId)
                          .Contains(sId)
        select x;
    return PartialView("QuickSearch_Results", results);
}