Question

I need to OR two SqlMethods.Like statements in LINQ, and I’m not sure how to accomplish it (or if it’s the right way to go about it).

I’ve got vendor ID and vendor name fields, but I’ve only got a generic vendor search that allows a user to search for a vendor based on their name or ID. I also allow wildcards in the search, so I need to find vendors whose ID or name is like the user’s input.

I want to do something like below, but obviously it’s not correct. (EDIT: It does work as written.)

results = results.Where(p => SqlMethods.Like(p.VendorId, inputVendor.Replace("*", "%") ||
                             SqlMethods.Like(p.VendorName, inputVendor.Replace("*", "%"));

Background: I add where statements depending on the search parameters entered by the user, hence the results = results.Where part.

Any help would be appreciated!

Answer 1

It’s not clear to me why this is “obviously” not correct. Presumably it’s not working, otherwise you wouldn’t have posted, but it’s not obvious how it’s not working.

I would suggest performing the replacement before the query, like this:

string vendorPattern = inputVendor.Replace("*", "%");

But then I’d expect this to work:

results = results.Where(p => SqlMethods.Like(p.VendorId, vendorPattern) ||
                             SqlMethods.Like(p.VendorName, vendorPattern));

Of course you’re limited to where wildcards can appear in a SQL LIKE query, but that’s a separate problem. (I’m not sure of the behaviour offhand if it’s not at the start or end.)

If that doesn’t help, please update the question with what happens when you try this.