Using “Match” in a Linq statement

Question

I have a table that has two records (there will be many at runtime). The deviceId of the records are, “DEVICE1” and “DEVICE2”. I want to use a regular expressio

Answer 1

You should always remember that your LinqToEntities queries must be translated to SQL queries. Since SQL Server has no support for regular expressions, this can not work.

As suggested in the comment by Paul Ruane, StartsWith will work. This can be translated by LinqToEntities into WHERE DeviceId LIKE 'DEVICE%'.

If StartsWith isn't enough because you may need to look for strings in the middle of database columns, Contains will also work:

var devices = from d in ctx.Devices
              where d.DeviceId.Contains("DEVICE")
              select d;

This will result in the following: WHERE DeviceId LIKE '%DEVICE%'.