EF core set take extension optional

Question

I am trying to prevent my methods returning all rows from large table if user did not pass filter to method. Now I doing something like this

public IQueryable<Doc> grids (string filter)
{
     int all = int.MaxValue;
     if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(filter))
         all = 5;
     return rampa.Doc.Where(x => x.Napomena.Contains(filter)).Take(all);
}

Is there a nicer way to avoid take extension conditionally. I do not want to burden SQL server whit unnecessarily top clue.

Answer 1

One of basic requirement of using Take() is you have to use OrderBy with it. Then to avoid top(int.max) write your query as follow:

public IQueryable<Doc> grids (string filter)
{ 
     IQueryable<Doc> query =  rampa.Doc;

     if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(filter))
     {
         query.Where(x => x.Napomena.Contains(filter)).Orderby(x => x.OrderByColumn).Take(5);
     }

     return query;
}