Therefore Programming Interface 3.0

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TheCondition Class

TheCondition represents a boolean test to the value of an TheCategoryField. When defining a new TheQuery you may add one or more TheCondition objects to the TheConditionList exposed through the TheQuery.Conditions property.

Namespace: Therefore.API

Parsing and Validation

TheCondition is only a data container class. It does not parse or validate the condition string by itself. When TheCondition is used in an TheQuery or TheMultiQuery all parsing and validation is done when the query is executed.

Using Column Names

An TheCondition is not associated to a category. Therefore you cannot address the field by name. The TheConditionList, however, can be associated with an TheCategory and provides an Add method that allows you to create and add conditions using column names.

Condition Strings and Operators

Condition strings can contain any value or operator valid for the associated field's type. Values 0-9 are valid for Currency and Number type fields, any alphanumeric text string for Text types, any date (in the local PC's date format) for Date fields or all valid keywords for keyword fields. The format used for decimal numbers (. or ,) and Date (mm/dd/yy, dd/mm/yy etc) are dependent on the local PC's (Windows O/S) default setting.

Operator	Description
And	Hits are generated only if both search terms are found
Or	Hits are generated if either of two search terms are found
To	Hits are generated for a range of values (e.g. 100 To 110, ab* To am*)
Empty	Hits are generated only for documents where this Index field is 'blank' (typically, this means 'not yet used' - for example 'Leaving Date' (when not yet left) or 'Final Cost' (when not yet finalized). Note that a 'mandatory' field can never be empty.
<	Hits are generated when 'less than' the entered value (e.g. < 10)
>	Hits are generated when 'greater than' the entered value (e.g. > 10)
<=	Hits 'less than or equal to' the entered value
>=	Hits 'greater than or equal to' the entered value
*	The standard 'wildcard' function, valid for Text (or Keyword) data types only. e.g. for 'a*' (in a keywords field), Hits all Documents containing any keyword that starts with the letter 'a'.
Today	Hits are generated for documents containing "today's date" (the current date shown by the Server). Valid only for Date type fields.

Functions can be combined to form complex search expressions.

For example:

">4711 AND <=5607" searches for index data 'greater than' 4711 and 'smaller than or equal to' 5607.

">=4711 OR 2303" searches for index data 'greater than or equal to' 4711 or (equal to) 2303.

UTC and time zones

By default all date and time values are considered to be in UTC, except it is specified otherwise by the IsUTC property or the bIsUTC parameter in TheConditionList.Add method overloads.

If IsUTC is false, the time zone specified in TheCultureInfo.TimeZoneInfoID returned by TheServer.GetCultureInfo is used for UTC conversion internally. If no culture info has been set, the time zone of the current user context will be used.

Name	Description
Condition	Gets or sets the the condition string.
FieldNo	Gets or sets the number of the field that the condition is applied to.
IsUTC	Gets or sets if the condition is set as UTC value or not. For DateTime fields only.

Name	Description
ToString	Returns a string representation of the TheCondition object