Gridify.EntityFramework 2.4.5

Gridify (A Modern Dynamic LINQ library)

Easy and optimized way to apply Filtering, Sorting and pagination using text-based data.

Gridify is a dynamic LINQ library that converts your strings to a LINQ query in the easiest way possible with excellent performance.

The best use case of this library is Asp-net APIs. When you need to get some string base filtering conditions to filter data or sort it by a field name or apply pagination concepts to your lists and return a pageable, data grid ready information, from any repository or database. Although, we are not limited to Asp.net projects and we can use this library on any .Net projects and on any collections.

You can find the version 1.x documentation on the Version1 Branch

WebApi Simple Usage example

// ApiController

public Paging<Person> GetPersons([FromQuery] GridifyQuery gQuery)
{
    // Gridify => Filter,Sort & Apply Paging
    // in short, Gridify returns data especially for data Grids.
    return myDbContext.Persons.Gridify(gQuery);
}

complete request sample:

http://exampleDomain.com/api/GetPersons?
          pageSize=100&
          page=1&
          orderBy=FirstName&
          filter=Age>10

// to make the example readable this not encoded url,
// make sure to always encode the query strings before passing it to your APIs

Also, we can totally ignore GridifyQuery

http://exampleDomain.com/api/GetPersons

What is GridifyQuery (basic usage example)

GridifyQuery is a simple class for configuring Filtering,Paging,Sorting.

// usually, we don't need to create this object manually
// for example, we get this object as a parameter from our API Controller
var gQuery = new GridifyQuery()
{
    Filter = "FirstName=John",
    Page = 1,
    PageSize = 20,
    OrderBy = "LastName"
};

Paging<Person> pData =
         myDbContext.Persons  // we can use Any list or repository or EntityFramework context
          .Gridify(gQuery); // Filter,Sort & Apply Paging


// pData.Count => Count persons with 'John', First name
// pData.Data      => First 20 Persons with 'John', First Name

ApplyFiltering

Also, if you don't need paging and sorting features simply use ApplyFiltering extension instead of Gridify.

var query = myDbContext.Persons.ApplyFiltering("name = John");
// this is equal to :
// myDbContext.Persons.Where(p => p.Name == "John");

see more examples in the tests

Performance comparison

Filtering is the most expensive feature in gridify. the following benchmark is comparing filtering in the most known dynamic linq libraries. As you can see, gridify has the closest result to the native linq. Also, i Should note other features like Pagination and Sorting have almost zero overhead in Gridify.

BenchmarkDotNet=v0.13.0, OS=Windows 10.0.19043.1237 (21H1/May2021Update) 11th Gen Intel Core i5-11400F 2.60GHz, 1 CPU, 12 logical and 6 physical cores .NET SDK=5.0.301 [Host] : .NET 5.0.7 (5.0.721.25508), X64 RyuJIT DefaultJob : .NET 5.0.7 (5.0.721.25508), X64 RyuJIT

| Method | Mean | Error | StdDev | Ratio | Gen 0 | Gen 1 | Allocated | |------------ |-----------:|---------:|---------:|------:|--------:|--------:|----------:| | Native LINQ | 740.9 us | 7.80 us | 6.92 us | 1.00 | 5.8594 | 2.9297 | 37 KB | | Gridify | 762.6 us | 10.06 us | 9.41 us | 1.03 | 5.8594 | 2.9297 | 39 KB | | DynamicLinq | 902.1 us | 11.56 us | 10.81 us | 1.22 | 19.5313 | 9.7656 | 122 KB | | Sieve | 977.9 us | 6.80 us | 6.37 us | 1.32 | 7.8125 | 3.9063 | 54 KB | | Fop | 2,959.8 us | 39.11 us | 36.58 us | 3.99 | 46.8750 | 23.4375 | 306 KB |

Installation

Install the Gridify NuGet Package.

Package Manager Console

Install-Package Gridify

.NET Core CLI

dotnet add package Gridify

Extensions

The library adds below extension methods to IQueryable:

TIP:

Gridify function is an ALL-IN-ONE package, that applies filtering and ordering and paging to your data and returns a Paging<T>.

But for example, if you need to just filter your data without paging or sorting options you can use ApplyFiltering function instead.

Supported Filtering Operators

We can easily create complex queries using parenthesis() with AND (,) + OR (|) operators.

Also, If you don't specify any value after = or != operators, gridify search for the default and null values.

   var gq = new GridifyQuery() { Filter = "Name=" };
   // this is equal to :
   // Persons.Where(p => p.Name is null || p.Name == string.Empty() )

Case-Insensitive search

The '/i' operator can be use after string values for case insensitive search:

var gq = new GridifyQuery() { Filter = "FirstName=John/i" };
// this is matched by => JOHN - john - John - jOHn - ...

Escape character

Filtering has five special character , | ( ) /i to handle complex queries and case-insensitive search. If you want to use these characters in your query values (after operator), you should add a backslash <code>\ </code> before them. having bellow regex could be helpfull ([(),|]|\/i).

JavaScript escape example:

let esc = (v) => v.replace(/([(),|]|\/i)/g, '\\$1')

Csharp escape example:

var value = "(test,test2)";
var esc = Regex.Replace(value, "([(),|]|\/i)", "\\$1" ); // esc = \(test\,test2\)

Multiple OrderBy

OrderBy accepts comma-separated field names followed by asc or desc keyword. by default, if you don't add these keywords, gridify assumes you need Ascending ordering.

e.g

// asc - desc
var gq = new GridifyQuery() { OrderBy = "Id" }; // default assending its equal to "Id asc"
var gq = new GridifyQuery() { OrderBy = "Id desc" }; // use desending ordering

// multiple orderings example
var gq = new GridifyQuery() { OrderBy = "Id desc, FirstName asc, LastName" };

Custom Mapping Support

By default Gridify is using a GridifyMapper object that automatically maps your string based field names to actual properties in your entities but if you have a custom DTO (Data Transfer Object) you can create a custom instance of GridifyMapper and use it to create your mappings.

// example Entities
public class Person
{
    public string FirstName {get;set;}
    public string LastName {get;set;}
    public Contact Contact {get;set;}

}
public class Contact
{
    public string Address {get;set;}
    public int PhoneNumber {get;set;}
}

// example DTO
public class PersonDTO
{
   public string FirstName {get;set;}
   public string LastName {get;set;}

   public string Address {get;set;}
   public int PhoneNumber {get;set;}
}

//// GridifyMapper Usage example -------------

var customMappings = new GridifyMapper<Person>()
        // because FirstName and LastName is exists in both DTO and Entity classes we can Generate them
        .GenerateMappings()
        // add custom mappings
        .AddMap("address", q => q.Contact.Address )
        .AddMap("PhoneNumber", q => q.Contact.PhoneNumber );


// as i mentioned before. usually we don't need create this object manually.
var gQuery = new GridifyQuery()
{
    Filter = "FirstName=John,Address=*st",
    OrderBy = "PhoneNumber"
};

// myRepository: could be entity framework context or any other collections
var gridifiedData = myRepository.Persons.Gridify(gQuery, customMappings);

By default GridifyMapper is Case-insensitive but you can change this behavior if you need Case-Sensitive mappings.

var customMappings = new GridifyMapper<Person>( q =>
{
   q.CaseSensitive = true;    // enalbe case-sensitvity.
   q.AllowNullSearch = false; // disable searching for null values
});

Value Convertor

If you need to change your search values before the filtering operation you can use this feature, the third parameter of the GridifyMapper AddMap method accepts a function that you can use to convert the input values. eg:

// convert values to lower case
var gm = new GridifyMapper<Person>()
       .AddMap("name" , q => q.FullName , v => v.ToLower() )

Filtering on Nested Collections

You can use LINQ Select and SelectMany methods to filter your data using its nested collections.

In this example, we have 3 nested collections, but filtering will apply to the Property1 of the third level.

var gm = new GridifyMapper<Level1>()
    .AddMap("prop1", l1 => l1.Level2List.SelectMany(l2 => l2.Level3List).Select(l3 => l3.Property1);

if you have only two-level nesting, you don't need to use SelectMany.

EntityFramework integration

If you need to use the async feature for entityFramework core, use Gridify.EntityFramework package instead.

This package have two additional GridifyAsync() and GridifyQueryableAsync() functions.

dotnet add package Gridify.EntityFramework

Also, I recommended to Enable EntityFramework compatibility layer if you using gridify on EF context.

 // You should use this configuration in your startup class or main method.
 GridifyGlobalConfiguration.EnableEntityFrameworkCompatibilityLayer();

QueryBuilder

The QueryBuilder class is really useful if you want to manually build your query, also when you don't want to use the extension methods.

usage eg:

var builder = new QueryBuilder<Person>()
        .AddCondition("name=John")
        .AddOrderBy("age, id");

 var query = builder.build(persons);

Compile and Reuse

You can access Gridify generated expressions using the GetFilteringExpression of GridifyQuery or BuildCompiled methods of QueryBuilder class, by storing an expression you can use it multiple times without having any overheads, also if you store a compiled expression you get a massive performance boost.

Important note: you should only use a compiled expression if you are not using Gridify alongside an ORM like Entity-Framework.

// eg.1 - using GridifyQuery - Compield - where only ----------------------
var gq = new GridifyQuery() { Filter = "name=John" };
var expression = gq.GetFilteringExpression<Person>();
var compiledExpression = expression.Compile();
var result = persons.Where(compiledExpression);

// eg.2 - using QueryBuilder - Compield - where only ----------------------
var compiledExpression = new QueryBuilder<Person>()
                         .AddCondition("name=John")
                         .BuildFilteringExpression()
                         .Compile();
var result = persons.Where(compiledExpression);

// eg.3 - using QueryBuilder - BuildCompiled ------------------------------
var func = new QueryBuilder<Person>()
          .AddCondition("name=John")
          .BuildCompiled();
var result = func(persons);

This is the performance improvement example when you use a compiled expression

| Method | Mean | Error | StdDev | Ratio | RatioSD | Gen 0 | Gen 1 | Allocated | |---------------- |-------------:|-----------:|-----------:|------:|--------:|---------:|--------:|----------:| | GridifyCompiled | 1.008 us | 0.0035 us | 0.0031 us | 0.001 | 0.00 | 0.1564 | - | 984 B | | NativeLINQ | 724.329 us | 6.4686 us | 6.0507 us | 1.000 | 0.00 | 5.8594 | 2.9297 | 37,392 B | | Gridify | 736.854 us | 5.7427 us | 5.0907 us | 1.018 | 0.01 | 5.8594 | 2.9297 | 39,924 B |

Combine Gridify with AutoMapper

//AutoMapper ProjectTo + Filtering Only, example
var query = myDbContext.Persons.ApplyFiltering(gridifyQuery);
var result = query.ProjectTo<PersonDTO>().ToList();

// AutoMapper ProjectTo + Filtering + Ordering + Paging, example
QueryablePaging<Person> qp = myDbContext.Persons.GridifyQueryable(gridifyQuery);
var result = new Paging<Person> (qp.Count,qp.Query.ProjectTo<PersonDTO>().ToList ());

Or simply add these two extentions to your project

public static Paging<TDestination> GridifyTo<TSource, TDestination>(this IQueryable<TSource> query,
                        IMapper autoMapper, IGridifyQuery gridifyQuery, IGridifyMapper<TSource> mapper = null)
{
   mapper = mapper.FixMapper();
   var res = query.GridifyQueryable(gridifyQuery, mapper);
   return new Paging<TDestination> (res.Count , res.Query.ProjectTo<TDestination>(autoMapper.ConfigurationProvider).ToList());
}

// only if you have Gridify.EntityFramework package installed.
public static async Task<Paging<TDestination>> GridifyToAsync<TSource, TDestination>(this IQueryable<TSource> query,
                        IMapper autoMapper, IGridifyQuery gridifyQuery, IGridifyMapper<TSource> mapper = null)
{
   mapper = mapper.FixMapper();
   var res = await query.GridifyQueryableAsync(gridifyQuery, mapper);
   return new Paging<TDestination> (res.Count , await res.Query.ProjectTo<TDestination>(autoMapper.ConfigurationProvider).ToListAsync());
}

Contribution

Any contribution to improve documentation and library is appreciated. Feel free to send pull-Requests. ❤️