Gridify

Easy and optimized way to apply Filtering, Sorting and pagination using text-based data.

The best use case of this library is Asp-net APIs. When you need to get some string base filtering conditions to filter data or sort it by a field name or apply pagination concepts to your lists and return a pageable, data grid ready information, from any repository or database.

You can find the version 1.x documentation on the Version1 Branch

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WebApi Simple Usage example

// ApiController

[Produces(typeof(Paging<Person>))]
public IActionResult GetPersons([FromQuery] GridifyQuery gQuery)
{
    // Gridify => Filter,Sort & Apply Paging 
    // in short, Gridify returns data especially for data Grids. 
    return myDbContext.Persons.Gridify(gQuery);
}

complete request sample:

http://exampleDomain.com/api/GetPersons?
          pageSize=100&
          page=1&
          orderBy=FirstName&
          filter=Age>10

Also, we can totally ignore GridifyQuery

http://exampleDomain.com/api/GetPersons

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What is GridifyQuery (basic usage example)

GridifyQuery is a simple class for configuring Filtering,Paging,Sorting.

// usually, we don't need to create this object manually
// for example, we get this object as a parameter from our API Controller
var gQuery = new GridifyQuery()
{
    Filter = "FirstName=John",
    Page = 1,
    PageSize = 20,
    OrderBy = "LastName"
};

Paging<Person> pData =
         myDbContext.Persons  // we can use Any list or repository or EntityFramework context
          .Gridify(gQuery); // Filter,Sort & Apply Paging


// pData.Count => Count persons with 'John', First name
// pData.Data      => First 20 Persons with 'John', First Name

ApplyFiltering

Also, if you don't need paging and sorting features simply use ApplyFiltering extension instead of Gridify.

var query = myDbContext.Persons.ApplyFiltering("name = John");
// this is equal to : 
// myDbContext.Persons.Where(p => p.Name == "John");

see more examples in the tests

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Performance comparison

Filtering is the most expensive feature in gridify. the following benchmark is comparing filtering in the most known dynamic linq libraries. As you can see, gridify has the closest result to the native linq. Also, i Should note other features like Pagination and Sorting have almost zero overhead in Gridify.

BenchmarkDotNet=v0.13.0, OS=Windows 10.0.19043.1165 (21H1/May2021Update) 11th Gen Intel Core i5-11400F 2.60GHz, 1 CPU, 12 logical and 6 physical cores .NET SDK=5.0.301 [Host] : .NET 5.0.7 (5.0.721.25508), X64 RyuJIT DefaultJob : .NET 5.0.7 (5.0.721.25508), X64 RyuJIT

Method	Mean	Error	StdDev	Ratio	RatioSD	Gen 0	Gen 1	Allocated
Native Linq	737.0 us	4.95 us	4.39 us	1.00	0.00	5.8594	2.9297	36 KB
Gridify	774.5 us	13.60 us	12.72 us	1.05	0.02	6.8359	2.9297	46 KB
DynamicLinq	902.7 us	16.33 us	15.28 us	1.22	0.02	19.5313	9.7656	122 KB
Sieve	982.3 us	11.06 us	10.35 us	1.33	0.01	8.7891	3.9063	54 KB
Fop	2,954.8 us	14.16 us	12.55 us	4.01	0.03	50.7813	23.4375	311 KB

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Installation

Install the Gridify NuGet Package.

Package Manager Console

Install-Package Gridify

.NET Core CLI

dotnet add package Gridify

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Extensions

The library adds below extension methods to IQueryable:

Extension	Description
ApplyFiltering (string)	Apply filtering using a raw string and returns an IQueryable<T>
ApplyFiltering (GridifyQuery)	Apply filtering using string Filter property of GridifyQuery class and returns an IQueryable<T>
ApplyOrdering	Apply ordering using string OrderBy and bool IsSortAsc properties of GridifyQuery class and returns an IQueryable<T>
ApplyPaging	Apply paging using short Page and int PageSize properties of GridifyQuery class and returns an IQueryable<T>
ApplyOrderingAndPaging	Apply both Ordering and paging and returns an IQueryable<T>
ApplyFilterAndOrdering	Apply both filtering and ordering and returns an IQueryable<T>
ApplyEverything	Apply filtering,ordering and paging and returns an IQueryable<T>
GridifyQueryable	Like ApplyEverything but it returns a QueryablePaging<T> that have an extra int Count property to use for pagination
Gridify	Receives a GridifyQuery , loads All requested data and returns Paging<T>

TIP:

Gridify function is an ALL-IN-ONE package, that applies filtering and ordering and paging to your data and returns a Paging<T>.

But for example, if you need to just filter your data without paging or sorting options you can use ApplyFiltering function instead.

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Supported Filtering Operators

Name	Operator	Usage example
Equal	=	"FieldName = Value"
NotEqual	!=	"FieldName !=Value"
LessThan	<	"FieldName < Value"
GreaterThan	>	"FieldName > Value"
GreaterThanOrEqual	>=	"FieldName >=Value"
LessThanOrEqual	<=	"FieldName <=Value"
Contains - Like	=*	"FieldName =*Value"
NotContains - NotLike	!*	"FieldName !*Value"
StartsWith	^	"FieldName ^ Value"
NotStartsWith	!^	"FieldName !^ Value"
EndsWith	$	"FieldName $ Value"
NotEndsWith	!$	"FieldName !$ Value"
AND - &&	,	"FirstName = Value, LastName = Value2"
OR - ||	|	"FirstName=Value|LastName=Value2"
Parenthesis	()	"(FirstName=*Jo,Age<30)|(FirstName!=Hn,Age>30)"

We can easily create complex queries using parenthesis() with AND (,) + OR (|) operators.

Escape character hint:

Filtering has four special character , | ( ) to handle complex queries. If you want to use these characters in your query values (after =), you should add a backslash \ before them.

JavaScript escape example:

let esc = (v) => v.replace(/([(),|])/g, '\\$1')

Csharp escape example:

var value = "(test,test2)";
var esc = Regex.Replace(value, "([(),|])", "\\$1" ); // esc = \(test\,test2\)

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Multiple OrderBy

OrderBy accepts comma-separated field names followed by asc or desc keyword. by default, if you don't add these keywords, gridify assumes you need Ascending ordering.

e.g

// asc - desc
var gq = new GridifyQuery() { OrderBy = "Id" }; // default assending its equal to "Id asc"
var gq = new GridifyQuery() { OrderBy = "Id desc" }; // use desending ordering

// multiple orderings example
var gq = new GridifyQuery() { OrderBy = "Id desc, FirstName asc, LastName" }; 

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Custom Mapping Support

By default Gridify is using a GridifyMapper object that automatically maps your string based field names to actual properties in your entities but if you have a custom DTO (Data Transfer Object) you can create a custom instance of GridifyMapper and use it to create your mappings.

// example Entities
public class Person
{
    public string FirstName {get;set;}
    public string LastName {get;set;}
    public Contact Contact {get;set;}

}
public class Contact
{
    public string Address {get;set;}
    public int PhoneNumber {get;set;}
}

// example DTO
public class PersonDTO
{
   public string FirstName {get;set;}
   public string LastName {get;set;}

   public string Address {get;set;}
   public int PhoneNumber {get;set;}
}

//// GridifyMapper Usage example -------------

var customMappings = new GridifyMapper<Person>()
        // because FirstName and LastName is exists in both DTO and Entity classes we can Generate them
        .GenerateMappings()
        // add custom mappings
        .AddMap("address", q => q.Contact.Address )
        .AddMap("PhoneNumber", q => q.Contact.PhoneNumber );


// as i mentioned before. usually we don't need create this object manually.
var gQuery = new GridifyQuery()
{
    Filter = "FirstName=John,Address=*st",
    OrderBy = "PhoneNumber"
};

// myRepository: could be entity framework context or any other collections
var gridifiedData = myRepository.Persons.Gridify(gQuery, customMappings);

By default GridifyMapper is Case-insensitive but you can change this behavior if you need Case-Sensitive mappings.

var customMappings = new GridifyMapper<Person>( q => 
{ 
   q.CaseSensitive = true;    // enalbe case-sensitvity.
   q.AllowNullSearch = false; // disable searching for null values
}); 

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Value Convertor

If you need to change your search values before the filtering operation you can use this feature, the third parameter of the GridifyMapper AddMap method accepts a function that you can use to convert the input values. eg:

// convert values to lower case
var gm = new GridifyMapper<Person>()
       .AddMap("name" , q => q.FullName , v => v.ToLower() )

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Filtering on Nested Collections

You can use LINQ Select and SelectMany methods to filter your data using its nested collections.

In this example, we have 3 nested collections, but filtering will apply to the Property1 of the third level.

var gm = new GridifyMapper<Level1>()
    .AddMap("prop1", l1 => l1.Level2List.SelectMany(l2 => l2.Level3List).Select(l3 => l3.Property1);

if you have only two-level nesting, you don't need to use SelectMany.

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EntityFramework integration

If you need to use the async feature for entityFramework core, use Gridify.EntityFramework package instead.

This package have two additional GridifyAsync() and GridifyQueryableAsync() functions.

dotnet add package Gridify.EntityFramework

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Combine Gridify with AutoMapper

//AutoMapper ProjectTo + Filtering Only, example
var query = myDbContext.Persons.ApplyFiltering(gridifyQuery);
var result = query.ProjectTo<PersonDTO>().ToList();

// AutoMapper ProjectTo + Filtering + Ordering + Paging, example
QueryablePaging<Person> qp = myDbContext.Persons.GridifyQueryable(gridifyQuery);
var result = new Paging<Person> (qp.Count,qp.Query.ProjectTo<PersonDTO>().ToList ());

Or simply add these two extentions to your project

public static Paging<TDestination> GridifyTo<TSource, TDestination>(this IQueryable<TSource> query,
                        IMapper autoMapper, IGridifyQuery gridifyQuery, IGridifyMapper<TSource> mapper = null)
{
   mapper = mapper.FixMapper();
   var res = query.GridifyQueryable(gridifyQuery, mapper);
   return new Paging<TDestination> (res.Count , res.Query.ProjectTo<TDestination>(autoMapper.ConfigurationProvider).ToList());
}   

// only if you have Gridify.EntityFramework package installed.
public static async Task<Paging<TDestination>> GridifyToAsync<TSource, TDestination>(this IQueryable<TSource> query,
                        IMapper autoMapper, IGridifyQuery gridifyQuery, IGridifyMapper<TSource> mapper = null)
{
   mapper = mapper.FixMapper();
   var res = await query.GridifyQueryableAsync(gridifyQuery, mapper);
   return new Paging<TDestination> (res.Count , await res.Query.ProjectTo<TDestination>(autoMapper.ConfigurationProvider).ToListAsync());
}

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Contribution

Any contribution to improve documentation and library is appreciated. Feel free to send pull-Requests. <3