Filtering nested entities with LLBLGen Pro ORM
22 Oct, 2017
In this post, we’ll cover how to filter nested entities when fetching either a single entity or a collection of entities. How is this different from the second filtering example from the previous post? Well, in the previous post we demonstrated how to filter main entities BY fields of related tables. This post explains how to filter nested entities, or how to choose which nested entities to prefetch.
Again we’ll use the same DB schema from some of my other LLBLGen posts (made using QuickDBD):
What we need to do is simply create a PredicateExpression and add it to the prefetchPath:
// Fetch all customers and only prefetch orders
// with TotalAmount bigger than 15
var customers = new EntityCollection<CustomerEntity>();
var prefetchPath = new PrefetchPath2(EntityType.CustomerEntity);
var orderPredicate = new PredicateExpression(OrderFields.TotalAmount > 15);
var orderPrefetchPath = prefetchPath.Add(CustomerEntity.PrefetchPathOrder, 0, orderPredicate);
using(var adapter = new DataAccessAdapter())
{
adapter.FetchEntityCollection(customers, prefetchPath);
}
// Fetch all customers and only prefetch orders when
// the corresponding product price is bigger than 20
var customers = new EntityCollection<CustomerEntity>();
var prefetchPath = new PrefetchPath2(EntityType.CustomerEntity);
var orderBucket = new RelationPredicateBucket();
orderBucket.Relations.Add(OrderEntity.Relations.ProductEntityUsingProductId);
orderBucket.PredicateExpression.Add(ProductFields.Price > 20);
var orderPrefetchPath = prefetchPath.Add(CustomerEntity.PrefetchPathOrder, 0, orderBucket.PredicateExpression, orderBucket.Relations);
using(var adapter = new DataAccessAdapter())
{
adapter.FetchEntityCollection(customers, prefetchPath);
}The second example demonstrates how to use a RelationPredicateBucket instead of a PredicateExpression if you need to filter nested entities by multiple fields or if you need to filter by sub-nested entities (i.e. products). If you don’t have to add any bucket relations, you can omit the last param.
Also, keep in mind you can add these predicates/buckets to prefetches whether you’re fetching a single or a collection of entities.
Feel free to leave a comment or ask a question below.
