converting Wildcard to Regex - regex

Question

I'm new in MVC, I want to perform Wildcard (*, ?) search on database. This is what I have done by using Regex:
Controller:
using System.Linq;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
using System.Web.Mvc;
using WebApplication1.Models;
namespace WebApplication1.Controllers
{
public class HomeController : Controller
{
CrossWord_dbEntities db = new CrossWord_dbEntities();
public ActionResult Index(string searching)
{
if (searching == null)
{
searching = "*";
}
string regEx = WildcardToRegex(searching);
return View(db.tbl_values.ToList().Where(x => Regex.IsMatch(x.Name, regEx, RegexOptions.Singleline)));
}
public static string WildcardToRegex(string pattern)
{
return "^" + Regex.Escape(pattern).
Replace("\\*", ".*").
Replace("\\?", ".") + "$";
}
}
}
View:
#model IEnumerable<WebApplication1.Models.tbl_values>
<br /><br />
#using (Html.BeginForm("Index", "Home", FormMethod.Get))
{
#Html.TextBox("searching") <input type="submit" value="Search" />
}
<table class="table table-striped">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Results</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
#if (Model.Count() == 0)
{
<tr>
<td colspan="3" style="color:red">
No Result
</td>
</tr>
}
else
{
foreach (var item in Model)
{
<tr>
<td>
#item.Name
</td>
</tr>
}
}
</tbody>
</table>
i have in my database three recordes: Hello, Hero, Shalom
when i type " H* " i get the result: Hello, Hero - this works great
but when i type " *lom " i get "No Result" instead of "Shalom"
or when i type " Hell?" i get "No Result" instead of "Hello"
what i did wrong ?

Answer 1

You can use the following
Expression<Func<tbl_value, bool>> query = m =>
SqlFunctions.PatIndex(searching.ToLower().Replace("*", "%"), m.Name.ToLower()) > 0;
var details = db.tbl_values.Where(query);
Hope this will help you