Nested Search Constraints.

donundeen

Hi,
I'm trying to do a search of the type:
"show me all assets where:
the asset's field X = "foo" AND
(the asset's field Y is either "bar" OR "baz")

originally my code looked like:

// first metadata fields , 'objCompositeKey'
constraint1 = new MBSearchConstraint();
meta1 = new MBMetadata();
meta1.mID = objCompositeKeyGuid;
meta1.mValue = objCompositeKey;
constraint1.mMetadata = meta1;
constraint1.mSearchOperator = "Equality";
constraint1.mBooleanOperator = MBBooleanOperator.AND;
constraints.Add(constraint1);

// second metadata field, amWingFilename, looking for value ".3dm" or ".3ds"
constraint = new MBSearchConstraint();
meta = new MBMetadata();
meta.IsMultipleValue = true;
meta.mID = amWingFilenameGuid;
meta.mValues = new String[2]{".3dm", ".3ds"};
constraint.mMetadata = meta;
constraint.mSearchOperator = "Equality";
constraint.mBooleanOperator = MBBooleanOperator.AND;
constraints.Add(constraint);

Somehow I got it into my head that using an array of values like I did was the correct way to search for multiple values matching a field (the "or" part)

This doesn't work:
MBException: Error in CMBVariant:perator MB:ataValuePtr(). Type of the variant not specified
and i'm pretty sure this approach is wrong.

I read in the API documentation that constrainst can be nested, which seems like the right approach, but I don't see in the docs, or in the object auto-completion, how to do this.

Can someone explain to me how to do these kinds of searches?

thanks for your time.
For one thing, the amWingFilename isn't a multipleValue field,

lyman

C# questions are far more entertaining when smilies are enabled!

Even though the server protocol allows for the specification of parentheses, the web service API does not. Grouping is added implicitly grouping (if I recall correctly) to the left, i.e., in your case you would want to say:

( (Y is value1 or Y is value2) and X is value3 )

with the grouping inferred by the API. It is an open enhancement request to use a normal form for grouping instead of this sort of grouping but this has not been implemented as of yet. We also regretfully do not have one constraint operator analogous to the SQL operation "IN".

Cheers,

Lyman Hurd