Question

I have a textbox with button wired up to a queryextender. My goal is that someone might enter into the textbox a name (e.g. “Dave Mackey”) and receive back all relevant results. The problem is that this information is spread across two columns in the underlying database (e.g. FIRST_NAME, LAST_NAME). My code looks like this:

 <asp:QueryExtender ID="QueryExtender1" runat="server" TargetControlID="EntityDataSource1" >
    <asp:SearchExpression DataFields="first_name,last_name" SearchType="Contains">
        <asp:ControlParameter ControlID="txtFilterText" />
    </asp:SearchExpression>
</asp:QueryExtender>

If I enter “Mackey” it returns results, but “Dave Mackey” returns no results, I’m assuming b/c it is looking for the entire value in one first (either, but not both together), whereas I want it to return any rows where it finds the entirety even if it is spread across multiple DataFields. Any ideas?

Answer 1

You are correct in your assumption.
QueryExtender‘s SearchExpression performs the search using the entire txtFilterText in each field in the DataFields enumeration.
What about using Dynamic LINQ and specifying a custom query in the EntityDataSoure OnSelecting event?