Question

I currently have an Entity Framework model that collects data from a legacy database and I am currently using an int on my Id properties

I am attempting to build a search box with autocomplete capabilities and want to have the autocomplete function to return a subset of records based on whether the sample id either contains or starts with (final design decision not made yet) and I am running into problems with converting the integer id to a string as I would normally use a recs.Id.toString().StartsWith(recordId) but this is apparently not supported by the Entity Framework

Is there a way around this limitation ?

My code looks like the following

Model:

public class Sample
{
  public Sample()
  {
      Tests = new List<Test>();
  }

public          int                     Id              { get; set; }
public          DateTime                SampleDate      { get; set; }
public          string                  Container       { get; set; }
public          string                  Product         { get; set; }
public          string                  Name            { get; set; }
public          string                  Status          { get; set; }

public virtual SamplePoint SamplingPoint { get; set; }
public virtual SampleTemplate SampleTemplate { get; set; }
public Customer ForCustomer { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<Test> Tests { get; set; }
}

and the query I am currently trying to apply to this model

[HttpGet]
public JsonResult AutoComplete(string partialId)
{
    var filteredSamples = 
                repo.AllSamples.Where( s =>                                   
                                String.Compare(s.Status, "A", false) == 0
                                && (s.Id.ToString()).StartsWith(partialId)
                        ).ToList();

    return Json(filteredSamples, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}

Any ideas would be awesome I am out of ideas at this point

Answer 1

I ended up adding a view for autocomplete data and converting the data to string in the select statement and this solved my issue