LINQ string[] against multiple fields

Question

Lets say I have a table dataContext.Customer with the following fields

    FName    varchar
    LName    varchar
    Phone    varchar
    DOB      datetime
          


        

Answer 1

I don't have a C# compiler at hand right now but I have this idea:

Declare a lambda Expression like this:

public Expression> GetFilterFromString(string input)
{
    return p=> p.FName.Contains(input) ||
               p.LName.Contains(input) ||
               p.Phone.Contains(input) ||
               p.DOB.ToString().Contains(input) ||
               p.Address.Contains(input) ||    
}

Implementation may vary depending on your needs (like concatenating all fields, like you did with your SQL query).

Then in your main query function:

IQueryable customers = dataContext.Customers;
foreach(string inputSearch in search)
{
    customers = customers.Where(GetFilterFromString(inputSearch));
}
IEnumerable results = customers.AsEnumerable();

I think the main advantage of this approach is that you have to declare GetFilterFromString once. Hope it is what you're looking for.

Edit:

Ok, so I read the SQL statement you were looking for (kind of late... but anyway). I think it's easy to adapt my solution. We will have to tweak the lambda expression a little:

public Expression> GetFilterFromString(string input)
    {
        return p => (p.FName + " " +
                   p.LName + " " +                  
                   p.Phone + " " +
                   p.DOB.ToString() + " " +
                   p.Address)
                   .Contains(input) 
    }