Question

I have a simple List with dummy data as follows:

List<Organisation> list = new List<Organisation>();
list.Add(new Organisation() { LogoUrl = "/images/logos/Blade.png", OrganisationId = 1, OrganisationName = "Blade" });
list.Add(new Organisation() { LogoUrl = "/images/logos/Torn.png", OrganisationId = 2, OrganisationName = "Torn" });

When I run the linq query:

var results = from org in OrganisationsController.GetDummyList()
              where org.OrganisationName.StartsWith(searchString)
              select org;

It always returns an Empty result. In this case the searchString is specified by the user and the example would be “Tor”.

Using different variations like ‘where org.OrganisationName == searchString‘ where the search string is Torn works. But StartsWith never works.

Any ideas where I’m going wrong?

EDIT:
From Jon’s code I changed my code to look as follows:

public JsonResult Search(string searchString)
{
    //create json result object
    JsonResult data = new JsonResult();

    var list = OrganisationsController.GetDummyList();

    //query the list
    var results = from org in list
        where org.OrganisationName.ToLower().Contains(searchString.ToLower())
        select org;

    if (results.Any())
    {
        System.Diagnostics.Debug.Write("found");
    }

    //setup the data
    data.Data = results;

    //return the data
    return Json(data, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}

Note: I changed the StartsWith to Contains, but both are giving me similary problems.
One of my organisations is called ‘Absa’. Here’s the really strange thing when I fire up the app for the first time putting in ‘bsa’ returns nothing, I then enter ‘Absa’ and it returns a good result. Then I entered ‘bsa’ again just to double check and it returned Absa which it didn’t in the first test. Why would the result not work at first then work later?

Thanks,
Jacques

Answer 1

Unable to reproduce. It works fine for me:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

class Organisation
{
    public string LogoUrl { get; set; }
    // Removed redundant Organisation prefixes
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

class Test
{
    static void Main()
    {
        // Used collection initializer for sanity
        var list = new List<Organisation>
        {
            new Organisation { LogoUrl = "Blade.png", Id = 1, Name = "Blade" },
            new Organisation { LogoUrl = "Torn.png", Id = 2, Name = "Torn" },
        };

        string searchString = "Tor";
        var query = from org in list
                    where org.Name.StartsWith(searchString)
                    select org;

        // Nicer version:
        // var query = list.Where(org => org.Name.StartsWith(searchString));

        Console.WriteLine(query.Count()); // 1
    }
}

Work out the difference between your code and my code to find out what’s wrong.

In particular, you’ve shown code using List<T>, which means LINQ to Objects. If your real code uses LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework, that could easily affect things.