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c#linqexpression-treesiqueryable

Performing part of a IQueryable query and deferring the rest to Linq for Objects


I have a Linq provider that sucessfully goes and gets data from my chosen datasource, but what I would like to do now that I have my filtered resultset, is allow Linq to Objects to process the rest of the Expression tree (for things like Joins, projection etc)

My thought was that I could just replace the expression constant that contains my IQueryProvider with the result-sets IEnumerable via an ExpressionVisitor and then return that new expression. Also return the IEnumerable's provider from my IQueryable...but this does not seem to work :-(

Any idea's?

Edit: Some good answers here, but given the form...

var qry = from c in MyProv.Table<Customer>()
          Join o in MyProv.Table<Order>() on c.OrderID equals o.ID
          select new 
          {
            CustID = c.ID,
            OrderID = o.ID
          }

In my provider I can easily get back the 2 resultsets from Customers and Orders, if the data was from a SQL source I would just construct and pass on the SQL Join syntax, but it this case the data is not from a SQL source so I need to do the join in code...but as I said I have the 2 result sets, and Linq to Objects can do a join...(and later the projection) it would be real nice to just substitute the Expression constants MyProv.Table<Customer> and MyProv.Table<Order> with List<Customer> and List<Order> and let a List<> provider process the expression...is that possible? how?


Solution

  • The kind of thing that I was after was replacing the Queryable<> constant in the expression tree with a concrete IEnumerable (or IQueryable via .AsQueryable()) result set...this is a complex topic that probably only makes any sense to Linq Provider writers who are knee deep in expression tree visitors etc.

    I found a snippet on the msdn walkthrough that does something like what I am after, this gives me a way forward...

    using System;
    using System.Linq;
    using System.Linq.Expressions;
    
    namespace LinqToTerraServerProvider
    {
        internal class ExpressionTreeModifier : ExpressionVisitor
        {
            private IQueryable<Place> queryablePlaces;
    
            internal ExpressionTreeModifier(IQueryable<Place> places)
            {
                this.queryablePlaces = places;
            }
    
            internal Expression CopyAndModify(Expression expression)
            {
                return this.Visit(expression);
            }
    
            protected override Expression VisitConstant(ConstantExpression c)
            {
                // Replace the constant QueryableTerraServerData arg with the queryable Place collection.
                if (c.Type == typeof(QueryableTerraServerData<Place>))
                    return Expression.Constant(this.queryablePlaces);
                else
                    return c;
            }
        }
    }