Correctly structuring this LinqToSql code - asp.net

Question

Normally I use stored procedures / work in SQL so apologies if I get the terminology slightly off here..
I have a database, with 3 seperate tables, and I need to search multiple fields in each of the 3 tables.
Im sure that I am not doing this the mose effective way, initially I am trying to do it in simple seteps to understand it.
I have the following;
var foo1 = entities.table1.Where(a => a.bodyText.Contains(searchString) || a.pageTitle.Contains(searchString));
var foo2 = entities.table2.Where(b => b.newsArticle.Contains(searchString) || b.newsArticle.Contains(searchString));
var foo3 = entities.table3.Where(c => c.ImageDescriptionContains(searchString));
I need to combine all these results into a single repeater for display.
At this point all 3 sets of data are in seperate, unique collections of anonymous data. So whats the best way of converting these into a single coherent bindable source?
I was thinking of itereating through each list in turn, pulling out the fields I need to display and putting them in a new class, then binding a lsit of these classes to the repeater.
But it all seems a bit clunky to me.
Is there a way of doing the search across all 3 tables in one go, and returning just the fields I need from each table, with a common name (i.e. in SQL I could write
select b.newsArticle as myText,
or
select newsArticle, ''
to return the news article and an empty string).

Answer 1

This would combine:
var foos = foo1.ToList();
foos.AddRange(foo2);
foos.AddRange(foo3);
To get just what you want:
var myExtractedValues = foos.Select(x => new {
Article = !string.IsNullOrEmpty(x.newsArticle))
? x.newsArticle
: string.Empty});
I have used an anonymous type here but you could swap the new {} with a type of your own.
I reverse the operator on the IsNullOrEmpty but that is just a personal preference (I prefer how is reads.)

Answer 2

To get all the results in one go you'll need to define a common class that will be used by all three queries to store the result. This class may be as well anonymous but I'll name it just for clarity.
class Data
{
public string Text{ get; set;}
}
Now, in your code you'll fetch instances of Data from database and you can use Union:
using( var entities = new YourDataContext)
{
var foo1 = entities.table1
.Where(a => a.bodyText.Contains(searchString) ||
a.pageTitle.Contains(searchString))
.Select(a => new Data{ Text = a.bodyText});
var foo2 = entities.table2
.Where(b => b.newsArticle.Contains(searchString) ||
b.newsArticle.Contains(searchString))
.Select(b => new Data{ Text = b.newsArticle});
var foo3 = entities.table3
.Where(c => c.ImageDescription.Contains(searchString))
.Select(c => new Data{ Text = c.ImageDescription});
return foo1.Union(foo2).Union(foo3);
}