Handle GridView.OnSorting() and create sorting expression dynamically using LINQ

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Introduction

The GridView control from ASP.NET 2.0 is great and widely used but has a significant limitation: the sorting event argument GridViewSortEventArg is string-based and is based on values in markup. So it can't be directly used in programmatic sorting using LINQ.

<asp:GridView runat="server" ID="gridPersons" 
         AutoGenerateColumns="false" AllowSorting="true" 
         OnSorting="gridPersons_Sorting">
    <Columns>
        <asp:BoundField HeaderText="First name" 
           DataField="FirstName" 
           SortExpression="FirstName" />
        <asp:BoundField HeaderText="Last name" 
           DataField="LastName" 
           SortExpression="LastName" />
    </Columns>
</asp:GridView>

protected void gridPersons_Sorting(object sender, GridViewSortEventArgs e)
{
    string sortExpression = e.SortExpression;
}

This article describes one of the methods to convert a string argument into a sorting expression.

Background

Let's assume we have a sequence of strongly typed class, say Person, and we want to bind it to a GridView and then sort it by clicking on the appropriate column:

class Person
{
    public string FirstName { get; set; }
    public string LastName { get; set; }
}

IEnumerable<Person> persons = GetPersons();
gridPersons.DataSource =  persons.ToArray();
gridPersons.DataBind();

Generally speaking, we could hard-code both the sorting expression (i.e., property to sort by) and the direction (ascending, descending):

protected void gridPersons_Sorting(object sender, GridViewSortEventArgs e)
{
    Func<Person, object> prop = null;
    switch (e.SortExpression)
    {
        case "FirstName":
        {
            prop = p => p.FirstName;
            break;
        }
        case "LastName":
        {
            prop = p => p.LastName;
            break;
        }
    }

    Func<IEnumerable<Person>, Func<Person, object>, 
           IEnumerable<Person>> func = null;
    switch (e.SortDirection)
    {
        case SortDirection.Ascending:
        {
            func = (c, p) => c.OrderBy(p);
            break;
        }
        case SortDirection.Descending:
        {
            func = (c, p) => c.OrderByDescending(p);
            break;
        }
    }

    IEnumerable<Person> persons = GetPersons();
    persons = func(persons, prop);

    gridPersons.DataSource = persons.ToArray();
    gridPersons.DataBind();
}

But such an approach contains a number of disadvantages: all the object's properties are hard-coded, as well as the sorting directions. Much better would be to create all that dynamically.

The Code

First let's wrap the sorting directions into classes and a dedicated helper class:

public static class SortExpressionBuilder<T>
{
    private static IDictionary<SortDirection, ISortExpression> directions = 
            new Dictionary<SortDirection, ISortExpression>
    {
        { SortDirection.Ascending, new OrderByAscendingSortExpression() },
        { SortDirection.Descending, new OrderByDescendingSortExpression() }
    };

    interface ISortExpression
    {
        Func<IEnumerable<T>, Func<T, object>, IEnumerable<T>> GetExpression();
    }

    class OrderByAscendingSortExpression : ISortExpression
    {
        public Func<IEnumerable<T>, Func<T, object>, IEnumerable<T>> GetExpression()
        {
            return (c, f) => c.OrderBy(f);
        }
    }

    class OrderByDescendingSortExpression : ISortExpression
    {
        public Func<IEnumerable<T>, Func<T, object>, IEnumerable<T>> GetExpression()
        {
            return (c, f) => c.OrderByDescending(f);
        }
    }

    public static Func<IEnumerable<T>, Func<T, object>, 
      IEnumerable<T>> CreateExpression(SortDirection direction)
    {
        return directions[direction].GetExpression();
    }
}

And wrap property selector created dynamically using LINQ Expression Tree into a handy extension method:

public static IEnumerable<T> OrderBy<T>(this IEnumerable<T> collection, 
       string columnName, SortDirection direction)
{
    ParameterExpression param = Expression.Parameter(typeof(T), "x"); // x
    Expression property = Expression.Property(param, columnName);     // x.ColumnName
    Func<T, object> func = Expression.Lambda<Func<T, object>>(        // x => x.ColumnName
        Expression.Convert(Expression.Property(param, columnName), 
        typeof(object)), param).Compile();

    Func<IEnumerable<T>, Func<T, object>, IEnumerable<T>> expression =
        SortExpressionBuilder<T>.CreateExpression(direction);
    IEnumerable<T> sorted = expression(collection, func);
    return sorted;
}

So now we have a flexible, fully dynamic and generic solution:

protected void gridPersons_Sorting(object sender, GridViewSortEventArgs e)
{
    IEnumerable<Person> persons = GetPersons();
    persons = persons.OrderBy(e.SortExpression, e.SortDirection);

    gridPersons.DataSource = persons.ToList();
    gridPersons.DataBind();
}