Sort/Order an Undetermined Number of Columns (LINQ\Entity Framework) - entity-framework

Question

Need to sort/order a list of data based on an undetermined number of columns (1 or more).
What i'm trying to do is loop through the desired columns and add an OrderBy or ThenBy based on their number to the query'd list, but i'm unsuccessful...
Done this, but it doesn't compile:
var query = GetAllItems(); //returns a IQueriable list of items
//for each selected column
for (int i = 0; i < param.Columns.Length; i++)
{
if (i == 0)
{
query = query.OrderBy(x => x.GetType().GetProperty(param.Columns[i].Name));
}
else
{
//ERROR: IQueriable does not contain a definition for "ThenBy" and no extension method "ThenBy"...
query = query.ThenBy(x => x.GetType().GetProperty(param.Columns[i].Data));
}
}
How can i resolve this issue? Or any alternative to accomplish this requirement?
SOLUTION: #Dave-Kidder's solution is well thought and resolves the compile errors i had. Just one problem, OrderBy only executes (actually sorts the results) after a ToList() cast. This is an issue because i can't convert a ToList back to an IOrderedQueryable.
So, after some research i came across a solution that resolve all my issues.
Microsoft assembly for the .Net 4.0 Dynamic language functionality: https://github.com/kahanu/System.Linq.Dynamic
using System.Linq.Dynamic; //need to install this package
Updated Code:
var query = GetAllItems(); //returns a IQueriable list of items
List<string> orderByColumnList = new List<string>(); //list of columns to sort
for (int i = 0; i < param.Columns.Length; i++)
{
string column = param.Columns[i].Name;
string direction = param.Columns[i].Dir;
//ex.: "columnA ASC"
string orderByColumn = column + " " + direction;
//add column to list
orderByColumnList.Add(orderBy);
}
//convert list to comma delimited string
string orderBy = String.Join(",", orderByColumnList.ToArray());
//sort by all columns, yay! :-D
query.OrderBy(orderBy).ToList();

Answer 1

The problem is that ThenBy is not defined on IQueryable, but on the IOrderedQueryable interface (which is what IQueryable.OrderBy returns). So you need to define a new variable for the IOrderedQueryable in order to do subsequent ThenBy calls. I changed the original code a bit to use System.Data.DataTable (to get a similar structure to your "param" object). The code also assumes that there is at least one column in the DataTable.
// using System.Data.DataTable to provide similar object structure as OP
DataTable param = new DataTable();
IQueryable<DataTable> query = new List<DataTable>().AsQueryable();
// OrderBy returns IOrderedQueryable<TSource>, which is the interface that defines
// "ThenBy" so we need to assign it to a different variable if we wish to make subsequent
// calls to ThenBy
var orderedQuery = query.OrderBy(x => x.GetType().GetProperty(param.Columns[0].ColumnName));
//for each other selected column
for (int i = 1; i < param.Columns.Count; i++)
{
orderedQuery = orderedQuery.ThenBy(x => x.GetType().GetProperty(param.Columns[i].ColumnName));
}

Answer 2

you should write ThenBy after OrderBy like this:
query = query
.OrderBy(t=> // your condition)
.ThenBy(t=> // next condition);