Question

I want to extend the default LINQ provider for NHibernate 3 with methods of my own. I want to be able to use some methods from my POCOs. I have a component named Range which is used quite often in many of my POCOs. This nhibernate component class has a method Contains(int value) that I want to use in LINQ query expressions

Mapping:

<class name="Foo">
  ...
  <component name="AgeRange">
    <property name="Min" column="age_min" />
    <property name="Max" column="age_max" />
  </component>
</class>

Class

public class Range {
  public int Min { get; set; }
  public int Max { get; set; }

  public bool Contains(int value) {
    return value >= this.Min && value <= this.Max;
  }
}

// this is the LINQ query I want to be able to write
// which will generate 'SELECT * FROM Foo WHERE 25 BETWEEN age_min AND age_max'
var s = from x in session.Query<Foo> where x.AgeRange.Contains(25) select x;

// I know the following works
var s = from x in session.Query<Foo> where x.AgeRange.Min <= 25 && x.AgeRange.Max >= 25 select x;

I looked at several blog posts explaining how to extend the LINQ provider but I don’t know how to build the expressions required for this to work.

public class RangeContainsGenerator : BaseHqlGeneratorForMethod
{
    public MemberInfo RangeMin;
    public MemberInfo RangeMax;

    public RangeContainsGenerator() {
        SupportedMethods = new[] { 
            ReflectionHelper.GetMethodDefinition<Range>(x=> x.Contains(0)),
        };

        RangeMin = ReflectionHelper.GetProperty<Range, int>(x => x.Min);
        RangeMax = ReflectionHelper.GetProperty<Range, int>(x => x.Max);
    }

    public override NHibernate.Hql.Ast.HqlTreeNode BuildHql(
        System.Reflection.MethodInfo method, 
        System.Linq.Expressions.Expression targetObject, 
        System.Collections.ObjectModel.ReadOnlyCollection<System.Linq.Expressions.Expression> arguments, 
        NHibernate.Hql.Ast.HqlTreeBuilder treeBuilder, 
        NHibernate.Linq.Visitors.IHqlExpressionVisitor visitor) {
            // The targetObject parameter contains the "Foo.AgeRange" member access expression
            throw new NotImplementedException(); 
    }
}

In the BuildHql method I don’t know how to access Min and Max properties of my Range class to build a HqlTreeNode

Answer 1

1. You can a manual approach: the easiest way is to create a LINQ tree that represents what you want: arguments[0] >= targetObject.Min && arguments[1] <= targetObject.Max. Here >= is Expression.GreaterThenOrEqual, . is Expression.Property and so on.

   When you have an expression tree, just apply visitor to it and return what it returns (I do not remember the exact API, but I can look into it if additional help is needed).

2. Another solution may be to try my little library: Expressive.
   It attempts to convert method IL into expressions, so you could do a LinqToHqlGeneratorsRegistry or IRuntimeMethodHqlGenerator that tries to inline any unknown property/method.