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

Answer 1

You can use a simple LINQ query, if all you need is to check for substrings:

var q = words.Any(w => myText.Contains(w));
// returns true if myText == "This password1 is weak";

If you want to check for whole words, you can use a regular expression:

1. Matching against a regular expression that is the disjunction of all the words:

   // you may need to call ToArray if you're not on .NET 4
   var escapedWords = words.Select(w => @"\b" + Regex.Escape(w) + @"\b");
   // the following line builds a regex similar to: (word1)|(word2)|(word3)
   var pattern = new Regex("(" + string.Join(")|(", escapedWords) + ")");
   var q = pattern.IsMatch(myText);
   

2. Splitting the string into words with a regular expression, and testing for membership on the words collection (this will get faster if you use make words into a HashSet instead of a List):

   var pattern = new Regex(@"\W");
   var q = pattern.Split(myText).Any(w => words.Contains(w));
   

In order to filter a collection of sentences according to this criterion all you have to do its put it into a function and call Where:

 // Given:
 // bool HasThoseWords(string sentence) { blah }
 var q = sentences.Where(HasThoseWords);

Or put it in a lambda:

 var q = sentences.Where(s => Regex.Split(myText, @"\W").Any(w => words.Contains(w)));

Ans From => How to check if any word in my List<string> contains in text by @R. Martinho Fernandes

Answer 2

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

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