Search string in cdata block

Question

One of the columns of my Microsoft SQL Server table contains a string formatted as XML

<root>
    <de><![CDATA[something]]></de>
    <fr><![CDATA[something]]></fr>
    <it><![CDATA[something]]></it>
    <en><![CDATA[something]]></en>
</root>

or

<root>
    <de>something</de>
    <it>something</it>
    <fr>something</fr>
    <en>something</en>
</root>

I need to extract all the records that contains a certain word, no matter if there's the CDATA or not.

So I structured the where conditions in LINQ in this way:

vc.Url.Contains(">" + URL + "<") || vc.Url.Contains("cdata[[]" + URL + "]")

If the searchtext matches and there is not CDATA, then the where condition works and I get the result.

if the searchtext matches and there is the CDATA, then the where condition doesn't work.

If I execute the query via SQL Server Management Studio:

  where vc.Url like '%>something<%' OR vc.Url like '%cdata[[]something]%'

I obtain the expected result.

Any idea about how to write the where condition in the right way and obtain the same result via SQL and via LINQ?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Entity Framework automatically escapes any special characters passed in to Contains , StartsWith , and EndsWith , so you don't need to use [[] . Try:

vc.Url.Contains(">" + URL + "<") || vc.Url.Contains("cdata[" + URL + "]")