ObjectDataSource.FilterExpression Property
Definition
Important
Some information relates to prerelease product that may be substantially modified before it’s released. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to the information provided here.
Gets or sets a filtering expression that is applied when the method that is specified by the SelectMethod property is called.
public:
property System::String ^ FilterExpression { System::String ^ get(); void set(System::String ^ value); };public string FilterExpression { get; set; }member this.FilterExpression : string with get, setPublic Property FilterExpression As StringProperty Value
A string that represents a filtering expression that is applied when data is retrieved by using the method or function identified by the SelectMethod property.
Exceptions
The FilterExpression property was set and the Select() method does not return a DataSet or DataTable.
Examples
The following code example demonstrates how to display filtered data using an ObjectDataSource control to retrieve data from a middle-tier business object and a GridView control to display the results. The ObjectDataSource control can filter data only when the method that retrieves the data retrieves it as a DataSet or DataTable object. For this reason, the SelectMethod property identifies a business object method that retrieves data as a DataSet.
The code example consists of a TextBox control, a GridView control, the ObjectDataSource control, and a Submit button. By default, the TextBox is populated with the name of one of the Northwind Traders employees. The GridView displays information about the employee that is identified by the name in the TextBox. To retrieve data on another employee, enter the full name of the employee in the TextBox, and then click the Submit button.
The FilterExpression property specifies an expression that is used to filter the data that is retrieved by the method that is specified by the SelectMethod property. It uses parameter placeholders that are evaluated to the parameters that are contained in the FilterParameters collection. In this example, the parameter placeholder is bounded by single quotation marks because the type of the parameter is a string type that might contain spaces. If the type of the parameter is a numeric or date type, bounding quotation marks are not required.
Important
This example has a text box that accepts user input, which is a potential security threat. By default, ASP.NET Web pages validate that user input does not include script or HTML elements. For more information, see Script Exploits Overview.
<%@ Register TagPrefix="aspSample" Namespace="Samples.AspNet.CS" Assembly="Samples.AspNet.CS" %>
<%@ Page language="c#" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<script runat="server">
protected void ObjectDataSource1_Filtering(object sender, ObjectDataSourceFilteringEventArgs e)
{
if (Textbox1.Text == "")
{
e.ParameterValues.Clear();
e.ParameterValues.Add("FullName", "Nancy Davolio");
}
}
</script>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
<head>
<title>ObjectDataSource - C# Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="Form1" method="post" runat="server">
<p>Show all users with the following name.</p>
<asp:textbox id="Textbox1" runat="server" text="Nancy Davolio" />
<asp:gridview
id="GridView1"
runat="server"
datasourceid="ObjectDataSource1"
autogeneratecolumns="False">
<columns>
<asp:boundfield headertext="ID" datafield="EmpID" />
<asp:boundfield headertext="Name" datafield="FullName" />
<asp:boundfield headertext="Street Address" datafield="Address" />
</columns>
</asp:gridview>
<!-- Security Note: The ObjectDataSource uses a FormParameter,
Security Note: which does not perform validation of input from the client. -->
<asp:objectdatasource
id="ObjectDataSource1"
runat="server"
selectmethod="GetAllEmployeesAsDataSet"
typename="Samples.AspNet.CS.EmployeeLogic"
filterexpression="FullName='{0}'" OnFiltering="ObjectDataSource1_Filtering">
<filterparameters>
<asp:formparameter name="FullName" formfield="Textbox1" defaultvalue="Nancy Davolio" />
</filterparameters>
</asp:objectdatasource>
<p><asp:button id="Button1" runat="server" text="Search" /></p>
</form>
</body>
</html>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="aspSample" Namespace="Samples.AspNet.VB" Assembly="Samples.AspNet.VB" %>
<%@ Page language="vb" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<script runat="server">
Protected Sub ObjectDataSource1_Filtering(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Web.UI.WebControls.ObjectDataSourceFilteringEventArgs)
If Textbox1.Text = "" Then
e.ParameterValues.Clear()
e.ParameterValues.Add("FullName", "Nancy Davolio")
End If
End Sub
</script>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
<head>
<title>ObjectDataSource - VB Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="Form1" method="post" runat="server">
<p>Show all users with the following name.</p>
<asp:textbox id="Textbox1" runat="server" text="Nancy Davolio" />
<asp:gridview
id="GridView1"
runat="server"
datasourceid="ObjectDataSource1"
autogeneratecolumns="False">
<columns>
<asp:boundfield headertext="ID" datafield="EmpID" />
<asp:boundfield headertext="Name" datafield="FullName" />
<asp:boundfield headertext="Street Address" datafield="Address" />
</columns>
</asp:gridview>
<!-- Security Note: The ObjectDataSource uses a FormParameter,
Security Note: which does not perform validation of input from the client. -->
<asp:objectdatasource
id="ObjectDataSource1"
runat="server"
selectmethod="GetAllEmployeesAsDataSet"
typename="Samples.AspNet.VB.EmployeeLogic"
filterexpression="FullName='{0}'" OnFiltering="ObjectDataSource1_Filtering">
<filterparameters>
<asp:formparameter name="FullName" formfield="Textbox1" defaultvalue="Nancy Davolio" />
</filterparameters>
</asp:objectdatasource>
<p><asp:button id="Button1" runat="server" text="Search" /></p>
</form>
</body>
</html>
The following code example provides an example of a middle-tier business object that the preceding code example uses. The code example consists of two basic classes:
The
EmployeeLogicclass, which is a class that encapsulates business logic.The
NorthwindEmployeeclass, which is a model class that contains only the basic functionality that is required to load and persist data from the data tier.
For simplicity, the EmployeeLogic class creates a static set of data, rather than retrieving the data from a data tier. It is also helpful for this example, because the sample relies on you to provide the full name of a Northwind Traders employee to demonstrate filtering. For a complete working example, you must compile and use these classes with the Web Forms code examples that are provided.
namespace Samples.AspNet.CS {
using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Data;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
//
// EmployeeLogic is a stateless business object that encapsulates
// the operations you can perform on a NorthwindEmployee object.
//
public class EmployeeLogic {
// Returns a collection of NorthwindEmployee objects.
public static ICollection GetAllEmployees () {
ArrayList data = new ArrayList();
data.Add(new NorthwindEmployee(1,"Nancy","Davolio","507 - 20th Ave. E. Apt. 2A"));
data.Add(new NorthwindEmployee(2,"Andrew","Fuller","908 W. Capital Way"));
data.Add(new NorthwindEmployee(3,"Janet","Leverling","722 Moss Bay Blvd."));
data.Add(new NorthwindEmployee(4,"Margaret","Peacock","4110 Old Redmond Rd."));
data.Add(new NorthwindEmployee(5,"Steven","Buchanan","14 Garrett Hill"));
data.Add(new NorthwindEmployee(6,"Michael","Suyama","Coventry House Miner Rd."));
data.Add(new NorthwindEmployee(7,"Robert","King","Edgeham Hollow Winchester Way"));
return data;
}
public static NorthwindEmployee GetEmployee(object anID) {
ArrayList data = GetAllEmployees() as ArrayList;
int empID = Int32.Parse(anID.ToString());
return data[empID] as NorthwindEmployee;
}
//
// To support basic filtering, the employees cannot
// be returned as an array of objects, rather as a
// DataSet of the raw data values.
public static DataSet GetAllEmployeesAsDataSet () {
ICollection employees = GetAllEmployees();
DataSet ds = new DataSet("Table");
// Create the schema of the DataTable.
DataTable dt = new DataTable();
DataColumn dc;
dc = new DataColumn("EmpID", typeof(int)); dt.Columns.Add(dc);
dc = new DataColumn("FullName",typeof(string)); dt.Columns.Add(dc);
dc = new DataColumn("Address", typeof(string)); dt.Columns.Add(dc);
// Add rows to the DataTable.
DataRow row;
foreach (NorthwindEmployee ne in employees) {
row = dt.NewRow();
row["EmpID"] = ne.EmpID;
row["FullName"] = ne.FullName;
row["Address"] = ne.Address;
dt.Rows.Add(row);
}
// Add the complete DataTable to the DataSet.
ds.Tables.Add(dt);
return ds;
}
}
public class NorthwindEmployee {
public NorthwindEmployee (int anID,
string aFirstName,
string aLastName,
string anAddress) {
ID = anID;
firstName = aFirstName;
lastName = aLastName;
address = anAddress;
}
private object ID;
public string EmpID {
get { return ID.ToString(); }
}
private string lastName;
public string LastName {
get { return lastName; }
set { lastName = value; }
}
private string firstName;
public string FirstName {
get { return firstName; }
set { firstName = value; }
}
public string FullName {
get { return FirstName + " " + LastName; }
}
private string address;
public string Address {
get { return address; }
set { address = value; }
}
}
}
Imports System.Collections
Imports System.Data
Imports System.Web.UI.WebControls
Namespace Samples.AspNet.VB
'
' EmployeeLogic is a stateless business object that encapsulates
' the operations you can perform on a NorthwindEmployee object.
'
Public Class EmployeeLogic
' Returns a collection of NorthwindEmployee objects.
Public Shared Function GetAllEmployees() As ICollection
Dim data As New ArrayList()
data.Add(New NorthwindEmployee(1, "Nancy", "Davolio", "507 - 20th Ave. E. Apt. 2A"))
data.Add(New NorthwindEmployee(2, "Andrew", "Fuller", "908 W. Capital Way"))
data.Add(New NorthwindEmployee(3, "Janet", "Leverling", "722 Moss Bay Blvd."))
data.Add(New NorthwindEmployee(4, "Margaret", "Peacock", "4110 Old Redmond Rd."))
data.Add(New NorthwindEmployee(5, "Steven", "Buchanan", "14 Garrett Hill"))
data.Add(New NorthwindEmployee(6, "Michael", "Suyama", "Coventry House Miner Rd."))
data.Add(New NorthwindEmployee(7, "Robert", "King", "Edgeham Hollow Winchester Way"))
Return data
End Function 'GetAllEmployees
Public Shared Function GetEmployee(anID As Object) As NorthwindEmployee
Dim data As ArrayList = CType(GetAllEmployees(), ArrayList)
Dim empID As Integer = Int32.Parse(anID.ToString())
Return CType(data(empID),NorthwindEmployee)
End Function 'GetEmployee
' To support basic filtering, the employees cannot
' be returned as an array of objects, rather as a
' DataSet of the raw data values.
Public Shared Function GetAllEmployeesAsDataSet() As DataSet
Dim employees As ICollection = GetAllEmployees()
Dim ds As New DataSet("Table")
' Create the schema of the DataTable.
Dim dt As New DataTable()
Dim dc As DataColumn
dc = New DataColumn("EmpID", GetType(Integer))
dt.Columns.Add(dc)
dc = New DataColumn("FullName", GetType(String))
dt.Columns.Add(dc)
dc = New DataColumn("Address", GetType(String))
dt.Columns.Add(dc)
' Add rows to the DataTable.
Dim row As DataRow
Dim ne As NorthwindEmployee
For Each ne In employees
row = dt.NewRow()
row("EmpID") = ne.EmpID
row("FullName") = ne.FullName
row("Address") = ne.Address
dt.Rows.Add(row)
Next
' Add the complete DataTable to the DataSet.
ds.Tables.Add(dt)
Return ds
End Function 'GetAllEmployeesAsDataSet
End Class
Public Class NorthwindEmployee
Public Sub New(anID As Integer, aFirstName As String, aLastName As String, anAddress As String)
ID = anID
Me.aFirstName = aFirstName
Me.aLastName = aLastName
Me.aAddress = anAddress
End Sub
Private ID As Object
Public ReadOnly Property EmpID() As String
Get
Return ID.ToString()
End Get
End Property
Private aLastName As String
Public Property LastName() As String
Get
Return aLastName
End Get
Set
aLastName = value
End Set
End Property
Private aFirstName As String
Public Property FirstName() As String
Get
Return aFirstName
End Get
Set
aFirstName = value
End Set
End Property
Public ReadOnly Property FullName() As String
Get
Return FirstName & " " & LastName
End Get
End Property
Private aAddress As String
Public Property Address() As String
Get
Return aAddress
End Get
Set
aAddress = value
End Set
End Property
End Class
End Namespace
Remarks
The ObjectDataSource control supports filtering data only when the Select method returns a DataSet or DataTable object.
The syntax that is used for the FilterExpression property is a format string-style expression. The filter expression syntax is the same syntax that is accepted by the Expression property. If you add parameters to the FilterParameters collection, you can also include format string placeholders. For example, include "{0}" in the expression to substitute for parameter values. The placeholders are replaced according to the index of the parameter in the FilterParameters collection.
You can include parameters in the FilterExpression property. If the type of the parameter is a string or character type, enclose the parameter in single quotation marks. Quotation marks are not required if the parameter is a numeric type.
The FilterParameters collection contains the parameters that are evaluated for the placeholders that are found in the FilterExpression property.
The FilterExpression property delegates to the FilterExpression property of the ObjectDataSourceView object that is associated with the ObjectDataSource control.
Note
You should validate any filter parameter value that you receive from the client. The runtime simply substitutes the parameter value into the filter expression and applies it to the DataSet or DataTable object that is returned by the Select method. If you are using the FilterExpression property as a security measure to limit the number of items that are returned, you must validate the parameter values before the filtering occurs.
