Posted with : Studying, Entity Framework

EntityFramework - advanced query

EntityFramework contains ObjectQuery type which supports to perform advanced and dynamic query for entity with SQL-like syntax.

Create ObjectQuery instance

ObjectQuery can be instantiated through DbContext such as

var queryString = "SELECT VALUE p FROM Projects as p WHERE p.Id > @projectId";
var query = ((IObjectContextAdapter)context).ObjectContext.CreateQuery<Project>(queryString, new ObjectParameter("projectId", 0));

Now we can apply filters (Top, Skip…) on the query such as

Get two fields only

var records = objectQuery.Select("it.Id, it.Name");

Applying pagination

The Skip accepts first parameters to order result befor filtering

var records = objectQuery.Select("it.Id, it.Name").Skip("it.Name", "2").Top("2");

By this way EF generates SQL command and executes via sp_executesql

exec sp_executesql N'SELECT 
[Extent1].[Id] AS [Id], 
[Extent1].[Name] AS [Name], 
[Extent1].[Employee_Id] AS [Employee_Id]
FROM [dbo].[Projects] AS [Extent1]
WHERE [Extent1].[Id] > @projectId',N'@projectId int',@projectId=0
go

LINQ to Entities

We can also use LINQ syntax to perform filter

var results =
	context.Projects.Where(p => p.Id > 0)
		.Select(x => new { x.Id, x.Name })
		.OrderByDescending(x => x.Name)
		.Skip(2)
		.Take(2)
		.ToList();

This way does the same work but it’s not dynamic. The fields must be specified at code at compilation time.

EF generates and performs SQL commands against db system (not using sp_executesql)

SELECT TOP (2) 
[Filter1].[Id] AS [Id], 
[Filter1].[Name] AS [Name]
FROM ( SELECT [Extent1].[Id] AS [Id], [Extent1].[Name] AS [Name], row_number() OVER (ORDER BY [Extent1].[Name] DESC) AS [row_number]
	FROM [dbo].[Projects] AS [Extent1]
	WHERE [Extent1].[Id] > 0
)  AS [Filter1]
WHERE [Filter1].[row_number] > 2
ORDER BY [Filter1].[Name] DESC
go

References

Written on October 10, 2015

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