Getting AutoQuery pagination to work with left join - servicestack

Question

In my AutoQuery request I have a left join specified so I can query on properties in the joined table.
public class ProductSearchRequest : QueryDb<Book>
, ILeftJoin<Book, BookAuthor>, ILeftJoin<BookAuthor, Author>
{}
If I use standard way of autoquery like so:
var q = AutoQuery.CreateQuery(request, base.Request);
var results = AutoQuery.Execute(request, q);
And 100 are being requested, then often less than 100 will be retuned as the Take() is based on results with a left join.
To remedy this I am doing this instead:
var q = AutoQuery.CreateQuery(request, base.Request);
q.OrderByExpression = null //throws error if orderby exists
var total = Db.Scalar<int>(q.Select(x => Sql.CountDistinct(x.Id))); //returns 0
var q1 = AutoQuery.CreateQuery(request, base.Request).GroupBy(x => x);
var results = Db.Select<Book>(q1);
return new QueryResponse<Book>
{
Offset = q1.Offset.GetValueOrDefault(0),
Total = total
Results = results
};
The group by appears to return correct number of results so paging works but the Total returns 0.
I also tried:
var total2 = (int)Db.Count(q1);
But even though q1 has a GroupBy() it returns the number of results including the left join and not the actual query
How can I get the true total of the query?
(Getting some official docs on how to do paging and totals with autoquery & left join would be very helpful as right now it's a bit confusing)

Answer 1

Your primary issue stems from trying to return a different total then the actual query AutoQuery executes. If you have multiple left joins, the total is the total results of the query it executes not the number of rows in your source table.
So you're not looking for the "True total", rather you're looking to execute a different query to get a different total than the query that's executed, but still deriving from the original query as its basis. First consider using normal INNER JOINS (IJoin<>) instead of LEFT JOINS so it only returns results for related rows in joined tables which the total will reflect accordingly.
Your total query that returns 0 is likely returning no results, so I'd look at looking at the query in an SQL Profiler so you can see the query that's executed. You can also enable logging of OrmLite queries with Debug logging enabled and in your AppHost:
OrmLiteUtils.PrintSql();
Also note that GroupBy() of the entire table is unusual, you would normally group by a single or multiple explicit selected columns, e.g:
.GroupBy(x => x.Id);
.GroupBy(x => new { x.Id, x.Name });