Why does my OData v4 API work for ?$filter=contains, but not ?$filter=field eq ‘val’?

I’ve written some OData V4 APIs to pull data from a local SQL database. I’m using curl to query the API. The APIs are ASP.NET and deployed on an IIS server.

If I query my OData API like this, I get the correct data back:

IPADDRESS/cdi_unsubscribes?$filter=contains(cdi_email,'<a href="https://getridbug.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="157c7b737a55">[email protected]</a>')

However, if I query my OData with an eq filter like this:

IPADDRESS/cdi_unsubscribes?$filter=cdi_email eq '<a href="https://getridbug.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="2f464149406f4a424e4643014c4042">[email protected]</a>'

I get the following error message:

“message”:”The query specified in the URI is not valid. The $filter expression must evaluate to a single boolean value.”

Then curl outputs:

curl: (6) Could not resolve host: eq

curl: (6) Could not resolve host: email.com’

I don’t understand why this is happening.

My WebApiConfig:

public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config)
    {
        ODataModelBuilder builder = new ODataConventionModelBuilder();

        config.AddODataQueryFilter();
        config.Select().Expand().Filter().OrderBy().MaxTop(null).Count().SkipToken();

        builder.EntitySet<cdi_unsubscribe>("cdi_unsubscribes");
        builder.EntityType<cdi_unsubscribe>().Filter("cdi_email");

        builder.EntitySet<Product>("Products");

        config.MapODataServiceRoute("ODataRoute", null, builder.GetEdmModel());
    }

I’ve added 2 lines to ensure that filtering works on that specific entity on that field. Removing one doesn’t fix this.

My Controller Class:

[HttpBasicAuthorize]
[RequireHttps]
public class cdi_unsubscribesController : ODataController
{
    cdi_unsubscribesContext db = new cdi_unsubscribesContext();

    private bool cdi_unsubscribeExists(Guid key)
    {
        return db.cdi_unsubscribes.Any(p => p.id.Equals(key));
    }

    protected override void Dispose(bool disposing)
    {
        db.Dispose();
        base.Dispose(disposing);
    }

    [EnableQuery]
    public IQueryable<cdi_unsubscribe> Get()
    {
        return db.cdi_unsubscribes;
    }

    [EnableQuery]
    public SingleResult<cdi_unsubscribe> Get([FromODataUri] Guid key)
    {
        IQueryable<cdi_unsubscribe> result = db.cdi_unsubscribes.Where(p => p.id.Equals(key));
        return SingleResult.Create(result);
    }

My Context Class:

public class cdi_unsubscribesContext : DbContext
{
    public cdi_unsubscribesContext() : base("name=cdi_unsubscribesContext")
    {

    }
    public DbSet<cdi_unsubscribe> cdi_unsubscribes { get; set; }

    protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder)
    {
        modelBuilder.HasDefaultSchema("crm");
    }
}

My Entity Definition:

public class cdi_unsubscribe
{
    public Guid id { get; set; }
    public Nullable<int> statecode { get; set; }
    public Nullable<int> statuscode { get; set; }
    public String cdi_email { get; set; }
    public Nullable<Guid> _cdi_contactid_value { get; set; }
    public String cdi_subscriptionchannel { get; set; }
    public Nullable<DateTime> createdon { get; set; }
}

Am I missing anything obvious? I would have thought that if contains works perfectly, then a basic eq filter should work just fine. My first guess would be that I’m not writing my eq filter correctly, but every example I see online looks just like mine (unless I’m blind!).

Answers:

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Method 1

It turns out that curl was the issue!

Replacing the spaces with %20 like so:

IPADDRESS/cdi_unsubscribes?$filter=cdi_email%20eq%20'<a href="https://getridbug.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="e0898e868fa0858d81898cce838f8d">[email protected]</a>'

worked.

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