How to defer creation of ODataQueryOptions to repository layer

Using OData directly on a model in the controller and returning a IQueryable is not an option for many reasons (i.e. access control, no one-to-one fields of DTO to DB, clean architecture, etc). The common option that I found is to have a parameter of type ODataQueryOptions in the controller method and then use the ApplyTo method later.

If you use Clean Architecture a query request in application layer is called that will call the repository. The ApplyTo method will then be called in the repository. This requires that the ODataQueryOptions type needs to be pushed down through all layers and all layers depend on OData.

A better solution would be to just save the OData query that is used in the REST call as a primitive string type and pass it through to the repository. Therfore neither API nor application layers need to depend on OData.

Right now the magic of parsing the query string and creating the ODataQueryOptions type happens in the middleware before the controller. Is it possible to call the parser directly so I can use the query string as a paramater and create the ODataQueryOptions type in the repository?

Start by tracing how the middleware parses the REST query string and creates ODataQueryOptions before the controller. Determine whether that parser can be called directly with a primitive query string so repository-layer creation avoids OData dependencies in the API and application layers. Done means a supported approach or a clear explanation of its limitations.