StartsWith/Endswith not supported when chaining Odata calls

[henning-krause]

I have a scenario where I need to call a Service via another service:

Client -> ServiceA -> ServiceB

ServiceA and ServiceB both expose their data via OData. So when I call ServiceA with

http://localhost:7071/Services(1)/DataItems

it should query ServiceB, fetch the data and return it to the client.

I've attached a sample solution doing just that: SampleApplication.zip.
Note: The sample App needs to be run as Administrator, otherwise it's not allowed to control the ports. And Just my code needs to be disabled to get the actual error message.

For most queries, this works just fine and I can even filter on the DataItems, as long as I'm using operators like equals, greater than, etc.

But if I run this query:

http://localhost:7070/odata/v4/Services(1)/DataItems?$filter=startswith(Name,'a')

I get this error:

System.NotSupportedException: 'The expression (IIF((([10008].Name == null) OrElse False), null, Convert([10008].Name.StartsWith("a"))) == True) is not supported.'

I've used the latest stable nuget packages as of this morning.

Is this a bug or simply not possible?

[AlanWong-MS]

@henning-krause, your query http://localhost:7070/odata/v4/Services(1)/DataItems?$filter=startswith(Name,'a') should be possible at ODL level. Are you running the query through WebAPI? I noticed that the Frontend.csproj references two different versions of OData. One is 7.4.4 and the other is 5.8.3 (as Microsoft.Data.OData, which was renamed when the version updated to 6.x). It could be that this query wasn't supported in 5.x and there's some sort of mis-route on the version of ODL. We do have a beta version of WebAPI that supports ODL 7.x, if the versioning is the issue.

[henning-krause]

@AlanWong-MS, I removed the old nuget package and updated everything else to the latest (prerelease) versions. Still got the same issue: SampleAppV2.zip

And I don't think the Frontend project is the problem. The error occurs in the Middleware project. I do see the call

GET /odata/v4/Services(1)/DataItems?$filter=startswith(Name,'a')

being passed to the Middleware and then the NotSupportedException is thrown in the Middleware process.

And as I said, a simpler filter using only equals or greater than is translated correctly.

[henning-krause]

@AlanWong-MS, any news on this one?

[AlanWong-MS]

@xuzhg, any thoughts on this issue?

[henning-krause]

@AlanWong-MS, any news?

[henning-krause]

I've just upgraded the sample application above to the latest pre-release version, but still, the error occurs.

This should work, shouldn't it?

[ekvanauk]

This thread is pretty old but I ran into a similar exception and changing the EnableQuery decorator from:
[EnableQuery]
to
[EnableQuery(HandleNullPropagation = Microsoft.AspNet.OData.Query.HandleNullPropagationOption.False)]
solved the issue for me, perhaps it will work for someone else

[KenitoInc]

startswith and endswith functions are supported on all levels of the OData stack.
Examples from our tests

odata.net/test/FunctionalTests/Microsoft.OData.Core.Tests/ScenarioTests/UriParser/FullUriFunctionalTests.cs

Line 164 in bfc95bb

public void ParseWithAllQueryOptionsWithoutAlias()

odata.net/test/FunctionalTests/Microsoft.OData.Core.Tests/ScenarioTests/UriParser/SelectExpandFunctionalTests.cs

Line 1509 in bfc95bb

public void DollarThisinFilterInsideSelectInsideExpandShouldReferenceSelectedItem()