PredicateBuilder helper function for create expression

Question

i have an form to search criteria, and i use PredicateBuilder to combine all criteras to an WHere Expression - and the EF generate sql for evaluate in DataBase side.

for allow the user choise between equal, start with, end with and contains, i use asterisk wildcard.

this my code:

var predicate = LinqKit.PredicateBuilder.New<PersonEntity>(true);


{
    var arg = parameters.Name;
    arg = arg.Trim();

    var start = arg[0] == '*';
    var end = arg[arg.Length - 1] == '*';

    arg = arg.Trim('*');

    if (start && end)
        predicate.And(x => x.Name.Contains(arg));
    else if (start)
        predicate.And(x => x.Name.StartsWith(arg));
    else if (end)
        predicate.And(x => x.Name.EndsWith(arg));
    else
        predicate.And(x => x.Name == arg);
}

{
    var arg = parameters.Address;
    arg = arg.Trim();

    var start = arg[0] == '*';
    var end = arg[arg.Length - 1] == '*';

    arg = arg.Trim('*');

    if (start && end)
        predicate.And(x => x.Address.Contains(arg));
    else if (start)
        predicate.And(x => x.Address.StartsWith(arg));
    else if (end)
        predicate.And(x => x.Address.EndsWith(arg));
    else
        predicate.And(x => x.Address == arg);
}

end ect...

i want write a generic helper function, for simple use:

predicate.And(Helper.AddStringCompareCriteria(x => x.Name, parameters.Name);
predicate.And(Helper.AddStringCompareCriteria(x => x.Address, parameters.Address);

my try for now:

public static class Helper
{
    static Type strType = typeof(string);
    static MethodInfo strStart = typeof(string).GetMethod("StartsWith");
    static MethodInfo strEnd = typeof(string).GetMethod("EndsWith");
    static MethodInfo strContains = typeof(string).GetMethod("Contains");
    static MethodInfo strEquals = typeof(string).GetMethod("Equals");

    static MethodInfo RightMethod(bool start, bool end)
    {
        if (start && end)
            return strContains;
        if (start)
            return strStart;
        if (end)
            return strEnd;
        else
            return strEquals;
    }

    public static Expression<Func<T, bool>> AddStringCompareCriteria<T, TResult>(Expression<Func<T, TResult>> member, string toComprae)
    {
        var arg = toComprae;
        arg = arg.Trim();

        var start = arg[0] == '*';
        var end = arg[arg.Length - 1] == '*';
        arg = arg.Trim('*');

        MethodInfo method = RightMethod(start, end);

        ParameterExpression entityParam = Expression.Parameter(typeof(T), "entity");


        return Expression.Lambda<Func<T, bool>>(
            Expression.Call(/* get-member-here?*/ , method, new[] { Expression.Constant(arg) }),
            entityParam);
    }
}

I now do not know how to access the selected member (by the function expression), And I'm not sure I'm in the right direction, I'd be happy to help!.

Answer 1

So first off, you need to remove the generic argument TResult , because your code requires it to be a string. Just replace all usages of that type with string , because any other type won't work with this method.

Next, rather than trying to build up the whole expression "by hand", it's far better to construct an expression that takes a string and computes a boolean using the appropriate comparison function, and then to just combine that expression with the provided expression. In general I'd say that you want to avoid building expressions by hand whenever you can possibly avoid it. Your code will be shorter, easier to understand, and importantly statically verified by the compiler .

So we'll start by adapting your RightMethod to return an Expression :

static Expression<Func<string, bool>> ComparisonExpression(bool start, bool end, string toCompare)
{
    if (start && end)
        return value => value.Contains(toCompare);
    if (start)
        return value => value.StartsWith(toCompare);
    if (end)
        return value => value.EndsWith(toCompare);
    else
        return value => value.Equals(toCompare);
}

Next we'll need a way of composing two expressions together. Here we have to build it by hand, but it can be written to compose any two arbitrary expression , so that we don't need to re-write the code every time two expressions need to be combined.

public static Expression<Func<TSource, TResult>> Compose<TSource, TIntermediate, TResult>(
    this Expression<Func<TSource, TIntermediate>> first,
    Expression<Func<TIntermediate, TResult>> second)
{
    var param = Expression.Parameter(typeof(TSource));
    var intermediateValue = first.Body.ReplaceParameter(first.Parameters[0], param);
    var body = second.Body.ReplaceParameter(second.Parameters[0], intermediateValue);
    return Expression.Lambda<Func<TSource, TResult>>(body, param);
}

Which uses the following code to actually replace the parameters:

public static Expression ReplaceParameter(this Expression expression,
    ParameterExpression toReplace,
    Expression newExpression)
{
    return new ParameterReplaceVisitor(toReplace, newExpression)
        .Visit(expression);
}
public class ParameterReplaceVisitor : ExpressionVisitor
{
    private ParameterExpression from;
    private Expression to;
    public ParameterReplaceVisitor(ParameterExpression from, Expression to)
    {
        this.from = from;
        this.to = to;
    }
    protected override Expression VisitParameter(ParameterExpression node)
    {
        return node == from ? to : base.Visit(node);
    }
}

And now your method is pretty trivial, as it's doing almost nothing other than calling out to our two methods:

public static Expression<Func<T, bool>> AddStringCompareCriteria<T>(Expression<Func<T, string>> member, string toCompare)
{
    toCompare = toCompare.Trim();

    var start = toCompare[0] == '*';
    var end = toCompare[toCompare.Length - 1] == '*';
    toCompare = toCompare.Trim('*');

    return member.Compose(ComparisonExpression(start, end, toCompare));
}