Question

I have the folowwing statement and I would like to have a LINQ equivalent:

SELECT *

  FROM People

  where Name like '%something%'

  ORDER BY CASE 

  WHEN Name LIKE 'something%' then 1

  WHEN Name LIKE '%something%' then 2

  ELSE 3 END

Basically, I’m retrieving all the rows which contains a value (in this case ‘something’) and I’m ordering them: first the ones starting with that value, and then the remaining.

Any idea on how to do that in LinQ?

Answer 1

I’ve came out with the following solution.

var dc = new EntityContext();

var result = dc 
// Condition part
.People.Where(x => x.Name.IndexOf("Foo") > -1) // This part is translated to like
// projection part
.Select(x => new { Person = x, Weight = x.Name.IndexOf("Bar") > -1 ? 1 : (x.Name.IndexOf("Baz") ? 2 : 0)})
// Order
.OrderBy(x => x.Weight)
// Final projection
.Select(x => x.Person);

I guess everything is self explanatory. First you select under your condition, then create a new object with weights necessary, then order it and finally take the necessary people.