Question

I have a textbox that takes free text as input for a search and I have a LINQ query that I want to extend with this type of search.

The input could be something like "big blue car" and that should result in a query that searches for titles that contain all these words.

There is also an option to switch to “any word” instead of “all words”.

What is the best/easiest way to add this to my LINQ query?

The query now looks like

from b in books
where b.InStore == true && b.Price > 10 && title.Contains()...at this point i want to add the text search. 
select b

Answer 1

I strongly reccommend you to do it with two queries!

But take a look at this, isn’t it cool?

var searchAll = true;
var words = List<string>{"big", "blue", "car"};

from b in books
where (...) (searchAll && words.All(x => title.contains(x))) ||
            (!searchAll && words.Any(x => title.Contains(x)))
select b

But you really should make it with two different queries.