I'm creating a database using ASP.NET which features two classes, Countries and Species. The Species model contains an ICollection of type Country, and I am trying to allow for a search string on the Species Index view to check not only for names of Species, but if the user types the name of a Country instead, to return Species who's Country Collections include a Country with a Name that matches the search string:
public ActionResult Index(string searchString, string Poison, string Venom)
{
var species = db.Species.Include(s => s.Countries);
if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(searchString))
{
species = species.Where(s => s.Name.Contains(searchString) || **s has a country who's Name contains searchString**);
}
}
This is my first question on stackoverflow, I'm not sure how many examples of my failed attempts are required, but the error messages I have received are largely based on being unable to convert type Country to String:
Values of type 'collection[NSDBz.DAL.Country(Nullable=True,DefaultValue=)]' can not be converted to string.
I can see there are similar questions being asked but their requirements are a bit more intricate so I'm unable, at my present skill level, to apply the solutions there to my problem here.
Based on your error, it appears you are trying to compare the Countries collection to the string, rather than checking if any of the countries in the collection have a matching name. I would suggest trying something similar to the following:
s.Countries.Any(c => c.Name.Contains(searchString))