How to Perform Wildcard Searches with LINQ?

Wildcard search in LINQ

In LINQ, it is often necessary to perform fuzzy searches for specific strings, such as contains, begins or ends, etc. operate. However, sometimes we need to perform a more flexible search, such as a wildcard search.

Challenge presented by the question

The user wants to perform a wildcard search similar to "%Test if%it work%" in LINQ. This type of search is useful for validation, filtering, and data matching.

Solution for SqlMethods.Like()

LINQ provides a way to perform a wildcard search through the SqlMethods.Like() method. This method takes two parameters: the first parameter is the string to search for, and the second parameter is a wildcard expression.

Example

Let's look at an example where we use SqlMethods.Like() to find users whose FirstName contains "John":

var results =
    from u in users
    where SqlMethods.Like(u.FirstName, "%John%")
    select u;

In this example, we will search for all users whose FirstName contains "John". Different wildcards can be used, for example:

• %: matches any sequence of characters
• _: matches a single character
• []: matches a specified range of characters (for example, [A-Z] matches all uppercase letters)

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