I was just reading a recent question on using conditionals in Linq and it reminded me of an issue I have not been able to resolve. When building Linq to SQL queries programatically how can this be done when the number of conditionals is not known until runtime?

For instance in the code below the first clause creates an IQueryable that, if executed, would select all the tasks (called issues) in the database, the 2nd clause will refine that to just issues assigned to one department if one has been selected in a combobox (Which has it's selected item bound to the departmentToShow property).

How could I do this using the selectedItems collection instead?

IQueryable<Issue> issuesQuery;

// Will select all tasks
issuesQuery = from i in db.Issues
              orderby i.IssDueDate, i.IssUrgency
              select i;

// Filters out all other Departments if one is selected
   if (departmentToShow != "All")
   {
        issuesQuery = from i in issuesQuery
                      where i.IssDepartment == departmentToShow
                      select i;
    }

By the way, the above code is simplified, in the actual code there are about a dozen clauses that refine the query based on the users search and filter settings.