ROW_NUMBER() and nhibernate - finding an item's page - nhibernate

Question

given a query in the form of an ICriteria object, I would like to use NHibernate (by means of a projection?) to find an element's order,
in a manner equivalent to using
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (...)
to find a specific item's index in the query.
(I need this for a "jump to page" functionality in paging)
any suggestions?
NOTE: I don't want to go to a page given it's number yet - I know how to do that - I want to get the item's INDEX so I can divide it by page size and get the page index.

Answer 1

After looking at the sources for NHibernate, I'm fairly sure that there exists no such functionality.
I wouldn't mind, however, for someone to prove me wrong.
In my specific setting, I did solve this problem by writing a method that takes a couple of lambdas (representing the key column, and an optional column to filter by - all properties of a specific domain entity). This method then builds the sql and calls session.CreateSQLQuery(...).UniqueResult(); I'm not claiming that this is a general purpose solution.
To avoid the use of magic strings, I borrowed a copy of PropertyHelper<T> from this answer.
Here's the code:
public abstract class RepositoryBase<T> where T : DomainEntityBase
{
public long GetIndexOf<TUnique, TWhere>(T entity, Expression<Func<T, TUnique>> uniqueSelector, Expression<Func<T, TWhere>> whereSelector, TWhere whereValue) where TWhere : DomainEntityBase
{
if (entity == null || entity.Id == Guid.Empty)
{
return -1;
}
var entityType = typeof(T).Name;
var keyField = PropertyHelper<T>.GetProperty(uniqueSelector).Name;
var keyValue = uniqueSelector.Compile()(entity);
var innerWhere = string.Empty;
if (whereSelector != null)
{
// Builds a column name that adheres to our naming conventions!
var filterField = PropertyHelper<T>.GetProperty(whereSelector).Name + "Id";
if (whereValue == null)
{
innerWhere = string.Format(" where [{0}] is null", filterField);
}
else
{
innerWhere = string.Format(" where [{0}] = :filterValue", filterField);
}
}
var innerQuery = string.Format("(select [{0}], row_number() over (order by {0}) as RowNum from [{1}]{2}) X", keyField, entityType, innerWhere);
var outerQuery = string.Format("select RowNum from {0} where {1} = :keyValue", innerQuery, keyField);
var query = _session
.CreateSQLQuery(outerQuery)
.SetParameter("keyValue", keyValue);
if (whereValue != null)
{
query = query.SetParameter("filterValue", whereValue.Id);
}
var sqlRowNumber = query.UniqueResult<long>();
// The row_number() function is one-based. Our index should be zero-based.
sqlRowNumber -= 1;
return sqlRowNumber;
}
public long GetIndexOf<TUnique>(T entity, Expression<Func<T, TUnique>> uniqueSelector)
{
return GetIndexOf(entity, uniqueSelector, null, (DomainEntityBase)null);
}
public long GetIndexOf<TUnique, TWhere>(T entity, Expression<Func<T, TUnique>> uniqueSelector, Expression<Func<T, TWhere>> whereSelector) where TWhere : DomainEntityBase
{
return GetIndexOf(entity, uniqueSelector, whereSelector, whereSelector.Compile()(entity));
}
}
public abstract class DomainEntityBase
{
public virtual Guid Id { get; protected set; }
}
And you use it like so:
...
public class Book : DomainEntityBase
{
public virtual string Title { get; set; }
public virtual Category Category { get; set; }
...
}
public class Category : DomainEntityBase { ... }
public class BookRepository : RepositoryBase<Book> { ... }
...
var repository = new BookRepository();
var book = ... a persisted book ...
// Get the index of the book, sorted by title.
var index = repository.GetIndexOf(book, b => b.Title);
// Get the index of the book, sorted by title and filtered by that book's category.
var indexInCategory = repository.GetIndexOf(book, b => b.Title, b => b.Category);
As I said, this works for me. I'll definitely tweak it as I move forward. YMMV.
Now, if the OP has solved this himself, then I would love to see his solution! :-)

Answer 2

ICriteria has this 2 functions:
SetFirstResult()
and
SetMaxResults()
which transform your SQL statement into using ROW_NUMBER (in sql server) or limit in MySql.
So if you want 25 records on the third page you could use:
.SetFirstResult(2*25)
.SetMaxResults(25)

Answer 3

After trying to find an NHibernate based solution for this myself, I ultimately just added a column to the view I happened to be using:
CREATE VIEW vw_paged AS
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY Id) AS [Row], p.column1, p.column2
FROM paged_table p
This doesn't really help if you need complex sorting options, but it does work for simple cases.
A Criteria query, of course, would look something like this:
public static IList<Paged> GetRange(string search, int rows)
{
var match = DbSession.Current.CreateCriteria<Job>()
.Add(Restrictions.Like("Id", search + '%'))
.AddOrder(Order.Asc("Id"))
.SetMaxResults(1)
.UniqueResult<Paged>();
if (match == null)
return new List<Paged>();
if (rows == 1)
return new List<Paged> {match};
return DbSession.Current.CreateCriteria<Paged>()
.Add(Restrictions.Like("Id", search + '%'))
.Add(Restrictions.Ge("Row", match.Row))
.AddOrder(Order.Asc("Id"))
.SetMaxResults(rows)
.List<Paged>();
}