Paging, Sorting, and Searching in ASP.NET MVC using PagedList and Dynamic Linq

PagedList.mvc is a lightweight API for server side paging in ASP.NET MVC. The only thing we want to avoid is reading all the records from the database and let the PagedList display the records by page. Obviously it's a bad design. What we want to achieved is to read and display the records per page.

In this article, we are going to explore how to read and display records using PagedList. Sort the records and provide search capability as well. We will also see how to use Dynamic Linq to avoid several if branching;

First: Start a ASP.NET MVC project. Go Managed Nuget Packages and install the following:

• PagedList.mvc
• Dynamic Linq

We are going to use Books' Record as our example.

Download Complete Source Code

The Screen Shot

The Project Structure

The Model

Book.cs The DbContext

BooksContext.cs We will use EF's Code First approach to build our database.

WhereExtension Class

WhereExtension.cs
I have included an extension on the Where Linq method to avoid too much branching. The purpose of this extension to perform Where operation when a condition is true.

Using the WhereIf method is very powerful, It will only execute the where query if the searchString variable is not null.

The Controller

HomeController.cs
Looking at the codes, we executed the Linq query at once; integrating the sort, search, and paging. This is to allow SQL statement to perform the TOP, ORDER, and  WHERE row_number at once.

Dynamic Linq was used for ordering purpose. Instead of using switch statement, we will directory use the field instead of the strongly type Linq Expression. Just make sure that the sortOrder variable matches the field/property that you are ordering.

The Index View
The @Html.PagedListPager will pass the sort order, search text and page number to the controller whenever the user interacts with these features.

Hope this article helps! Your thoughts!