LINQ: Entity string field contains any of an array of strings

Question

I want to get a collection of Product entities where the product.Description property contains any of the words in a string array.

It would look something like this (result would be any product which had the word "mustard OR "pickles" OR "relish" in the Description text):

Dim products As List(Of ProductEntity) = New ProductRepository().AllProducts

Dim search As String() = {"mustard", "pickles", "relish"}

Dim result = From p In products _
     Where p.Description.Contains(search) _
     Select p

Return result.ToList

I already looked at this similar question but couldn't get it to work.

Answer 1

Dim result = From p in products _
             Where search.Any(Function(s) p.Description.Contains(s))
             Select p

Answer 2

You have it the wrong way around :)

It should be:

Where search.Contains(p.Description)

Answer 3

Since you want to see if search contains a word which is contained in the description of p you basically need to test for each value in search if it is contained in the description of p

result = from p in products
           where search.Any(val => p.Description.Contains(val))
           select p;

This is c# syntax for the lambda method since my vb is not that great