Using Telerik’s new LINQ implementation with WCF RIA Services Part II: Query Methods

In my last blog post, I showed how Telerik’s new LINQ implementation works with WCF RIA Services. In that post I built a Domain Model from the Northwind database as well as a RIA Services Domain Service. I then showed the drag and drop features of RIA Services and created a simple Silverlight application with no code. Today we are going to take that example one step further by creating some custom server side Query Methods.

A query method is just a facility to query a data source. In RIA Services, you define a query method explicitly so it can be used on the client. This is pretty straight forward with RIA Services. Let’s create a query method to query the Customer table by its primary key (CustomerID) in the database. To do this, open the project we used in the previous blog post and add this code to the DomainService class in the server project.

 1:  //This query method
will return only 1 customer

 2:  [Query(IsComposable = false)]

 3:  public Customer
GetCustomersByID(string customerID)

 4:  {

 5:  //must also include
the Germany restriction

 6:  //to keep in sync with the GetCustomers
business logic

 7:  return this.DataContext.Customers.SingleOrDefault

 8:  (c => c.CustomerID == customerID 

 9:  && c.Country=="Germany");

 10:  }

This method will return one customer and you need to specify that by the attribute IsComposable=False (Line 2). Everything else is pretty basic, you have a method signature that accepts a parameter (Line 3) and a LINQ statement that filters the data by CustomerID as well as by country (lines 8-9). We are filtering by country as well because in our original business logic (in Part I) we had a GetCustomers() method that filtered all of the records by the country Germany. This new GetCustomersByID method knows nothing of the GetCustomers() method so we have to replicate that business logic here. (We have hard coded the value of Germany, in a production application, you would most likely obtain this value from a database or cookie after authentication.)

Let’s create a second query method, one that will filter the Customer data source by the ContactName field and return a collection, not a single item. We define an IQueryable collection of Customer as the return value in the method signature (Line 3) and accept a parameter. This parameter is used in our LINQ statement to filter the data source (Lines 9-10). In addition, just like the previous example, we must also filter by the country Germany; also replicate the OrderBy of our GetCustomers() method (Line 11).

 1: //This query method
will return a collection of customers

 2: //filtered by the letters passed
in on the contact name

 3: public IQueryable<Customer>
GetCustomersByLetter(string letter)

 4: {

 5:  //must also include
the Germany restriction

 6:  //to keep in sync with the GetCustomers
business logic

 7:  //also since we
are returning a collection, must

 8:  //respect the OrderBy as well
from the business logic

 9:  return this.DataContext.Customers.Where

 10:  (c => c.ContactName.StartsWith(letter) == true

 11:  && c.Country == "Germany").OrderBy(c
=> c.CustomerID);

 12: }

Now that we have defined two query methods, let’s wire them up to our XAML form in the Silverlight application.

In our Silverlight application, delete the grid that we had dragged onto the form in Part I. Replace it with two labels, two text boxes, two buttons and a grid (set the grid’s AutoGenerateColumns property to True.) Your XAML page should look something like this:

Now we have to write some code.

In the last blog post we were able to use the drag and drop features of RIA Services and not write any code. Today I will show you how to perform similar and more advanced functions with just a little bit of code. First we need two using statements in order to get working:

using SilverlightApplication6.Web;
using System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Client;

Next we need to create a global variable for the RIA Services DomainService’s context.

 1: //domain context
for all RIA operations

 2: private DomainService1
domainContext = new DomainService1();

Next we will load the grid with all of the data the first time the XAML form loads. We load the data by calling the GetCustomers() method we created in the previous blog post (we use the domainContext global variable in line 6.).

 1: void MainPage_Loaded(object sender,
RoutedEventArgs e)

 2: {

 3:  //since we are going
across the wire, must explicitly tell

 4:  //RIA Services that we are going
to load data 

 5:  LoadOperation<Customer> loadOperation
= 

 6:  domainContext.Load<Customer>(domainContext.GetCustomersQuery());

 7:  //the actual binding
of the results, RIA takes care of the async

 8:  this.dataGrid1.ItemsSource
= loadOperation.Entities;

 9: }

This code does the same thing as the drag and drop did in the previous blog post, call GetCustomers() (Lines 5-6) and bind the results (line 8). Notice in the codegen on the client, RIA Services appends the word “Query” to all query methods.  In the previous blog post this was done automatically, but today we did it via code. If we run this it will give us the following view:

Now let’s wire up the buttons so we can perform the filters. First we will wire up the button that will search by CustomerID. That button click event will call the GetCustomerByID query method (lines 11-13) and bind the results (line 15.) We have to pass in the data the user entered in the text box, make sure in production to validate this data!

 1: private void button1_Click(object sender,
RoutedEventArgs e)

 2: {

 3:  //disable the buttons
during the async load

 4:  //to prevent the user from clicking
twice while waiting

 5:  button1.IsEnabled = false;

 6:  button2.IsEnabled = false;

 7:  

 8:  //since we are going across
the wire, must explicitly tell

 9:  //RIA Services that
we are going to load data 

 10:  //Also here is where you pass
the parameter in 

 11:  LoadOperation<Customer> loadOp
= domainContext.Load

 12:  (domainContext.GetCustomersByIDQuery(textBox1.Text), 

 13:  CustomerLoadedCallback, null);

 14:  //the actual data binding,
RIA takes care of the async

 15:  dataGrid1.ItemsSource = loadOp.Entities;

 16: }

As part of the operation, RIA Services will handle the asynchronous processing for you. The problem is that users are not used to async operations, so they may try to click on the button more than once. We account for this by disabling the buttons (lines 5-6) until the operation is complete.  We have to catch the end of the async operation in a callback function and pass that in as a parameter to the operation (line 13). The callback function is here:

 1: //callback function
for when the load is complete

 2: private void CustomerLoadedCallback(LoadOperation<Customer>
loadOperation)

 3: {

 4:  //re-enable our buttons

 5:  //if you want to
display an "IsBusy" graphic

 6:  //this is where you would remove
it

 7:  button1.IsEnabled = true;

 8:  button2.IsEnabled = true;

 9: }

Let’s run this and test it out. If you filter by “ALFKI”, the results look like this:

Now let’s do the same for the the filter by ContactName. The code behind the button event is here:

 1: private void button2_Click(object sender,
RoutedEventArgs e)

 2: {

 3:  //disable the buttons
during the async load

 4:  //to prevent the user from clicking
twice while waiting

 5:  button1.IsEnabled = false;

 6:  button2.IsEnabled = false;

 7:  

 8:  //since we are going across
the wire, must explicitly tell

 9:  //RIA Services that
we are going to load data 

 10:  //Also here is where you pass
the parameter in 

 11:  LoadOperation<Customer> loadOp
= domainContext.Load

 12:  (domainContext.GetCustomersByLetterQuery(textBox2.Text),

 13:  CustomerLoadedCallback, null);

 14:  //the actual data binding,
RIA takes care of the async

 15:  dataGrid1.ItemsSource = loadOp.Entities;

 16: }

Similar to the previous example, we are calling the query method, this time GetCustomersByLetter (lines 11-13) and passing in the value the user typed into the text box. When we run this and filter by all contacts that start with the letter H, it looks like this:

Hopefully with these two examples you can see the power of using Telerik’s new LINQ implementation and WCF RIA Services.

Enjoy!