Best way to configure search for multiple paths, templates?

Question

We want to build a search interface that pulls results both from media library and different content paths, to include both pdf and standard content items. What is the best way to structure the predicate statements? Our current code looks like this:

var predicate = PredicateBuilder.True<SearchResultItem>();
predicate = predicate.And(i => i.Paths.Contains(Paths.PdfsFolderID));
predicate = predicate.And(i => i.Content.Contains(Key));
predicate = predicate.And(i => i.TemplateName.Equals("pdf"));
IQueryable<SearchResultItem> queryable = context.GetQueryable<SearchResultItem>().Where(predicate);
                queryable.Count();

This brings in the media library pdf files that we want included. How do we go about adding in the content items? We have tried predicate.or to include alternate paths and templates, but so far, no luck. In case it is pertinent, we use Lucene, and are on on SC 7.2.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

There is alot of good blog posts about this:

E.g. https://www.geekhive.com/buzz/post/2017/08/predicate-builder-advanced-search-queries/

And as jrap commented, you should just combined multiple predicates.

So Something like:

 var templateQuery = PredicateBuilder.False<ContentSearchResultItem>();
   templateQuery= templateQuery.Or(item => item.TemplateName.Equals("pdf"));
   templateQuery= templateQuery.Or(item = item.TemplateName.Equals("content item template"));

var pathQuery= PredicateBuilder.False<ContentSearchResultItem>();
   pathQuery= templateQuery.Or(item => i.Paths.Contains(Paths.PdfsFolderID));
   pathQuery= templateQuery.Or(item = i.Paths.Contains(Paths.ContentFolderID));

var predicate = PredicateBuilder.True<SearchResultItem>();
predicate = predicate.And(pathQuery);
predicate = predicate.And(templateQuery);
predicate = predicate.And(i => i.Content.Contains(Key));

Usually i use false, when creating OR statements because that makes most sense in my head (false OR predicateA OR predicateB), and true, when creating AND statements (true AND predicateA AND predicateB) Im not 100% sure on how sitecore translates this into queries, but i think its ignored.