LINQ Between Operator
The following works fine with IEnumerable types, but is there any way to get something like this working with IQueryable types against a sql database?
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var items = new[] { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, };
foreach (var item in items.Where(i => i.Between(2, 6)))
Console.WriteLine(item);
}
}
static class Ext
{
public static bool Between<T>(this T source, T low, T high) where T : IComparable
{
return source.CompareTo(low) >= 0 && source.CompareTo(high) <= 0;
}
}
If you express it as a where
clause it may just work out of the box with LINQ to SQL, if you can construct an appropriate expression.
There may be a better way of doing this in terms of the expression trees - Marc Gravell may well be able to improve it - but it's worth a try.
static class Ext
{
public static IQueryable<TSource> Between<TSource, TKey>
(this IQueryable<TSource> source,
Expression<Func<TSource, TKey>> keySelector,
TKey low, TKey high) where TKey : IComparable<TKey>
{
Expression key = Expression.Invoke(keySelector,
keySelector.Parameters.ToArray());
Expression lowerBound = Expression.GreaterThanOrEqual
(key, Expression.Constant(low));
Expression upperBound = Expression.LessThanOrEqual
(key, Expression.Constant(high));
Expression and = Expression.AndAlso(lowerBound, upperBound);
Expression<Func<TSource, bool>> lambda =
Expression.Lambda<Func<TSource, bool>>(and, keySelector.Parameters);
return source.Where(lambda);
}
}
It will probably depend on the type involved though - in particular, I've used the comparison operators rather than IComparable<T>
. I suspect this is more likely to be correctly translated into SQL, but you could change it to use the CompareTo
method if you want.
Invoke it like this:
var query = db.People.Between(person => person.Age, 18, 21);