What would be the best approach to following situation:

GridView is bound to ObjectDataSource via DataSourceID pointing to a processing class. Query to populate ObjectDataSource is based on user-entered criteria, which is then used in HQL by the method associated with ObjectDataSource.SelectMethod.
The problem is - user can choose to use several (or none) different criteria fields. Upon post-back we can custom-tune SelectParameters nad their number, but what do we do with Select method? We can't pass any classes to it, because Parameter accepts only primitive types (and even those are in a string format). This leaves us with either declaring multiple Select methods for all possible number of parameters or encode all parameters into some class and serialize it to string. Both approaches seem ugly - any suggestions?

On a same note - what do you, guys, usually do to indicate names of named HQL arguments - pass names as a separate parameter?

TIA,

Sam

You can pass references to objects with ObjectDataSource. Add an eventhandler to ObjectDataSource.Selecting, and pass the reference there.

For example:



Both Select and SelectCount will trigger this event.

About HQL. IMHO, you shouldnt use HQL to do this select. Check out the ICriteria API, which is much easier to work with when you are dealing with multiple search criterias. Building strings is just bad. :)

Thank you - works great.