Querying with NHibernate

Question

I am new to NHibernate and I am trying to learn how to query my data.

Below is the configuration xml. Only the recipe is shown.

I want to be able to query recipes by recipetitle from keywords entered and also ingredients from ingredientname.

So you might enter "pasta wine" for example.

This is what I have tried but gives me an error.

    hql = "from Recipe r " +
    "left join r.Images " +
    "inner join r.User " +
    "inner join r.Ingredients i " +
    "where i.IngredientName Like '%pasta%' OR i.IngredientName Like '%wine%' OR r.RecipeTitle Like '%pasta' OR r.RecipeTitle Like '%wine%'";

I want to eager load the collections as well.

Am I going about querying right?? I need to able to build the query string from my search criteria. This would be easy form me in SQL.

Malcolm

  <class name="Recipe" table="Recipes" xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2">
    <id name="RecipeID" type="Int32" column="RecipeID">
      <generator class="identity" />
    </id>
    <property name="RecipeTitle" type="String">
      <column name="RecipeTitle" />
    </property>
    <property name="Completed" type="Boolean">
      <column name="Completed" />
    </property>
    <property name="ModifiedOn" type="DateTime">
      <column name="ModifiedOn" />
    </property>
    <property name="Rating" type="Double">
      <column name="Rating" />
    </property>
    <property name="PrepTime" type="Int32">
      <column name="PrepTime" />
    </property>
    <property name="CookTime" type="Int32">
      <column name="CookTime" />
    </property>
    <property name="Method" type="String">
      <column name="Method" />
    </property>
    <bag name="Images" inverse="true" cascade="all">
      <key column="RecipeID" />
      <one-to-many class="OurRecipes.Domain.RecipeImage, OurRecipes.Domain, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null" />
    </bag>
    <many-to-one name="Category" column="CategoryID" />
    <bag name="Comments" inverse="true" cascade="all">
      <key column="RecipeID" />
      <one-to-many class="OurRecipes.Domain.Comment, OurRecipes.Domain, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null" />
    </bag>
    <many-to-one name="User" column="EnteredByID" />
    <bag name="Ingredients" inverse="true" cascade="all">
      <key column="RecipeID" />
      <one-to-many class="OurRecipes.Domain.Ingredient, OurRecipes.Domain, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null" />
    </bag>
  </class>

Answer 1

To build dynamic queries, I would use the criteria API. This makes the dynamic query much more stable, because you don't need string operations to build it up.

ICriteria query = Session.CreateCriteria(typeof(Recipe), "r")
  .CreateCriteria("Ingredients", "i", JoinType.InnerJoin)
  .Add(
    Expression.Disjunction() // OR
      .Add(Expression.Like("i.IngredientName", "%pasta%"))
      .Add(Expression.Like("i.IngredientName", "%wine%"))
      .Add(Expression.Like("r.RecipeTitle", "%pasta%"))
      .Add(Expression.Like("r.RecipeTitle", "%wine%")));

List<Recipe> result = query.List<Recipe>();

Edit:

For eager loading you could set the fetch-mode:

ICriteria query = Session.CreateCriteria(typeof(Recipe), "r")
  .SetFetchMode("Images", FetchMode.Join)
  .SetFetchMode("Comments", FetchMode.Join)
  .SetFetchMode("Ingredients", FetchMode.Join)

But I wouldn't do this because you get the results multiplied by the number of Images, Comments and Ingredients. So if you had 4 Images, 2 Comments and 12 Ingredients, you get your recipe 96 times. You don't recognize this, because NHibernate puts the things together again, but it generates traffic between the application and the database. So better let NHibernate load it with separate queries.

---

One more edit to show dynamic query composition.

// filter arguments, all are optional and should be omitted if null
List<string> keywords;
TimeSpan? minCookingTime;
TimeSpan? maxCookingTime;
int? minRating;
int? maxRating;

ICriteria query = Session.CreateCriteria(typeof(Recipe), "r");

if (keyword != null)
{
  // optional join
  query.CreateCriteria("Ingredients", "i", JoinType.InnerJoin);

  // add keyword search on ingredientName and RecipeTitle
  var disjunction = Expression.Disjunction();
  foreach (string keyword in keywords)
  {
    string pattern = String.Format("%{0}%", keyword);
    disjunction
      .Add(Expression.Like("i.IngredientName", pattern))
      .Add(Expression.Like("r.RecipeTitle", pattern)); 
  }
  query.Add(disjunction)
}

if (minCookingTime != null)
{
  query.Add(Expression.Ge(r.CookingTime, minCookingTime.Value));
}
if (maxCookingTime != null)
{
  query.Add(Expression.Le(r.CookingTime, maxCookingTime.Value));
}

if (minRating != null)
{
  query.Add(Expression.Ge(r.Rating, minRating.Value));
}
if (maxRating != null)
{
  query.Add(Expression.Le(r.Rating, maxRating.Value));
}