using ExpressionEditor with Castle DictionaryAdpter

[Erhan]

If you find yourself binding your RadGridView to objects that are dynamically generated by Castle's DictionaryAdapter.

You might be surprised by the expressions that are generated by the ExpressionEditor involve a mysterious CastleDictionaryAdapterType like 

Expression {Expression<System.Func<CastleDictionaryAdapterType, bool>>}

when you were expecting it to be:

Expression {Expression<System.Func<IDataRecord, bool>>}

where IDataRecord is the interface your run-time instances are generated from by DictionaryAdapter

Despite the fact that CastleDictionaryAdapterType implements your IDataRecord (and a bunch of other things) you won't be able to directly cast between them as your FilterDescriptor requires

The solution is to re-write the expression that ExpressionEditor.Expression property gives you. Here's a simple expression visitor that does that:

public class CastleDictionaryAdapterTypeVisitor<TInput> : ExpressionVisitor
  {
    private ReadOnlyCollection<ParameterExpression> _parameters;
    private ParameterExpression _parameter;

    public Expression Modify(Expression expression_)
    {
      return Visit(expression_);
    }

    #region Overrides of ExpressionVisitor
    protected override Expression VisitParameter(ParameterExpression node_)
    {
      return _parameter ?? (_parameter = Expression.Parameter(typeof(TInput), node_.Name));
    }

    protected override Expression VisitLambda<T>(Expression<T> node_)
    {
      _parameters = VisitAndConvert(node_.Parameters, node_.Name);
      return Expression.Lambda(Visit(node_.Body), _parameters);
    }

    protected override Expression VisitMember(MemberExpression node_)
    {
      return node_.Member.DeclaringType?.ToString() == "CastleDictionaryAdapterType"
               ? Expression.Property(Visit(node_.Expression), node_.Member.Name) : base.VisitMember(node_);
    }
    #endregion
  }

 

You can use it like this (I've modified the ExpressionEditor filtering RadGridView Telerik sample) 

private void ExpressionEditor_OnExpressionChanged(object sender_, RadRoutedEventArgs e_)
{

  if(this.ExpressionEditor.Expression != null &&
    this.ExpressionEditor.Expression.GetType().ToString().Contains("CastleDictionaryAdapterType"))
  {
    var visitor = new CastleDictionaryAdapterTypeVisitor<ITestDataRecord>();
    var convertedExpression = visitor.Modify(ExpressionEditor.Expression) as Expression<Func<ITestDataRecord, bool>>;

    if (convertedExpression != null)
    this._genericFilterDescriptor.FilteringExpression = convertedExpression;

    if(!this.RadGridView.FilterDescriptors.Contains(this._genericFilterDescriptor))
      this.RadGridView.FilterDescriptors.Add(this._genericFilterDescriptor);

    this.errorMessageBlock.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed;
  }
  else if(this.ExpressionEditor.Expression == null)
  {
    if(this.RadGridView.FilterDescriptors.Contains(this._genericFilterDescriptor))
      this.RadGridView.FilterDescriptors.Remove(this._genericFilterDescriptor);

    this.errorMessageBlock.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed;
  }
  else
  {
    this.errorMessageBlock.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;
  }
}

What is needed here is to provide a way to signal to the ExpressionEditor the specific type/interface to use, as opposed to letting the control figure it out from its Item property.

 

 

 

 

 

[Martin]

Hello Erhan,

Thank you for sharing your solution with the community. We appreciate it. For that reason, I have updated your Telerik points as a gratitude for your cooperation. 

Regards,
Martin Vatev
Telerik by Progress