Question

Working with a database TABLE called Costcenter.
I am trying to show the Costcenters in a dropdownlist where CostcenrCode is only three numeric characters. I was trying to do that on the VIEW on an ASP.Net WF application. Now I have moved it to the DataAccess query where I am using LINQ to SQL. I am bit confused, how to do it in the LINQ query where I am returning String. I am selecting cc at the end which is populating all the Costcenters in the database table. But I need to only pull the one is like (e.g. 100 instead of F.C56).

My DataAccess code is as follows:

    public static IEnumerable<Costcenter> GetAllCostcentersByCountryCompanyProfitcenterYear(short year, int companyID)
    {
        List<Costcenter> costcenters = new List<Costcenter>();
        using (var context = new CostReportEntities())
        {
            costcenters = (from cc in context.Costcenters
                           join company in context.Companies on cc.CompanyID equals company.CompanyID
                           where cc.Year == year && cc.CompanyID == companyID
                           select cc).ToList();

        }
        return costcenters;

    }

I have been looking at few posts here, but couldn’t put anything together since I am new in LINQ to SQL.

Answer 1

This may do the trick:

var costcenters = (from cc in context.Costcenters
                    join company in context.Companies on cc.CompanyID equals company.CompanyID
                    where cc.Year == year && cc.CompanyID == companyID &&
                       SqlMethods.Like(cc.CostcenrCode, "[0-9][0-9][0-9][^0-9]%")
                    select cc).ToList();

Source:

LINQ to SQL query to determine if value starts with numeric

Edit 1 – added alternative solution using SqlMethods.PatIndex:

var costcenters = (from cc in context.Costcenters
                    join company in context.Companies on cc.CompanyID equals company.CompanyID
                    where cc.Year == year && cc.CompanyID == companyID &&
                       SqlMethods.PatIndex("[0-9][0-9][0-9][^0-9]%", cc.CostcenrCode) > 0
                    select cc).ToList();