How to select only specific properties of navigation property - entity-framework

I've got a simplify entity structure like the following:
class MarkingTask{
List<Task_Student> task_Students
}
class Task_Student{
List<Task_Student_Marker> task_Student_Markers
}
class Task_Student_Marker{
User marker
}
class User{
string name;
int age;
int password;
}
I am doing an eager loading like the following:
var taskList = context.markingTasks
.Include(mt => mt.task_Students)
.ThenInclude(ts => ts.task_Student_Markers)
.ThenInclude(tsm => tsm.marker) //Here, only want to select marker.name
.ToList();
The question is where can I do a select clause on the navigation property to select a few columns of interest? For instance, for now, all of the properties of User are being selected, but I just want the User.name.
I looked up the MSDN, it seems the select clause is not supported inside include clause.
or I have to break it down into several statements.
Thanks for the tip

Include and Select are two mutually exclusive things that can not be set simultaneously on the navigation object. In my case, they are all being interpreted as left Join, but Include will select all the properties in the navigation object. I ended up doing a few nested select to target properties of interset
var mts = context.markingTasks.Where(mt => mt.rubric.moduleConvenor.emailAddress == email && mt.task_Students.Count() != 0)
.Select(mt => new {
mt.name,
mt.moduleCode,
students = mt.task_Students.Select(ts => new {
ts.student.name,
ts.student.studentId,
markers = ts.task_Student_Markers.Select(tsm=>tsm.marker.userName).ToList()}).ToList()}).ToList();

Related

EF custom select with entity property as parameters

For every table (and I have a lot of them) I provide Lookup REST API method in my ASP.Net Core application.
This is part of my query for every table:
context.Users.Select(t => new ViewLookupModel()
{
id = t.Id,
title = t.DisplayName
})
//......
context.Groups.Select(t => new ViewLookupModel()
{
id = t.Id,
title = t.Name
})
But I want to write extension to shrink code I need to write for every table. Something like this:
public static IQueryable<ViewLookupModel> SelectLookup<T>(this IQueryable<T> query, Func<int> idField, Func<string> titleField)
{
return query.Select(t => new ViewLookupModel()
{
id = idField(),
title = titleField()
});
}
And use case:
context.Users.SelectLookup(t => t.Id, t => t.DisplayName)
//......
context.Groups.SelectLookup(t => t.Id, t => t.Title)
But I get error:
Delegate 'Func' does not take 1 arguments.
This and this question seems similar, but I can not get it to work.
I am also interesting in any performance issues when querying database with custom SELECT extension method.
Change your extension method to this and try. Extension method takes T as input and returns the corresponding int or string etc.
public static IQueryable<ViewLookupModel> SelectLookup<T>(this IQueryable<T> query, Func<T,int> idField, Func<T,string> titleField)
{
return query.Select(t => new ViewLookupModel()
{
id = idField(t),
title = titleField(t)
});
}

How to Use Automapper on DTO Returned From EF?

I was told to use automapper in the code below. I cannot get clarification for reasons that are too lengthy to go into. What object am I supposed to be mapping to what object? I don't see a "source" object, since the source is the database...
Would really appreciate any help on how to do this with automapper. Note, the actual fields are irrelevant, I need help with the general concept. I do understand how mapping works when mapping from one object to another.
public IQueryable<Object> ReturnDetailedSummaries(long orgId)
{
var summaries = from s in db.ReportSummaries
where s.OrganizationId == orgId
select new SummaryViewModel
{
Id = s.Id,
Name = s.Name,
AuditLocationId = s.AuditLocationId,
AuditLocationName = s.Location.Name,
CreatedOn = s.CreatedOn,
CreatedById = s.CreatedById,
CreatedByName = s.User.Name,
OfficeId = s.OfficeId,
OfficeName = s.Office.Name,
OrganizationId = s.OrganizationId,
OrganizationName = s.Organization.Name,
IsCompleted = s.IsCompleted,
isHidden = s.isHidden,
numberOfItemsInAuditLocations = s.numberOfItemsInAuditLocations,
numberOfLocationsScanned = s.numberOfLocationsScanned,
numberOfItemsScanned = s.numberOfItemsScanned,
numberofDiscrepanciesFound = s.numberofDiscrepanciesFound
};
return summaries;
}
It is a handy and a timesaver, especially if you use a one to one naming between translations layers. Here is how I use it.
For single item
public Domain.Data.User GetUserByUserName(string userName)
{
Mapper.CreateMap<User, Domain.Data.User>();
return (
from s in _dataContext.Users
where s.UserName==userName
select Mapper.Map<User, Domain.Data.User>(s)
).SingleOrDefault();
}
Multiple Items
public List<Domain.Data.User> GetUsersByProvider(int providerID)
{
Mapper.CreateMap<User, Domain.Data.User>();
return (
from s in _dataContext.Users
where s.ProviderID== providerID
select Mapper.Map<User, Domain.Data.User>(s)
).ToList();
}
It looks like you already have a model? SummaryViewModel?
If this isn't the DTO, then presumably you want to do:
Mapper.CreateMap<SummaryViewModel, SummaryViewModelDto>();
SummaryViewModelDto summaryViewModelDto =
Mapper.Map<SummaryViewModel, SummaryViewModelDto>(summaryViewModel);
AutoMapper will copy fields from one object to another, to save you having to do it all manually.
See https://github.com/AutoMapper/AutoMapper/wiki/Getting-started
The source is your entity class ReportSummary, the target is SummaryViewModel:
Mapper.CreateMap<ReportSummary, SummaryViewModel>();
The best way to use AutoMapper in combination with an IQueryable data source is through the Project.To API:
var summaries = db.ReportSummaries.Where(s => s.OrganizationId == orgId)
.Project().To<SummaryViewModel>();
Project.To translates the properties in the target model straight to the selected columns in the generated SQL.
Mapper.Map, on the other hand, only works on in-memory collections, so you can only use it when you first fetch complete ReportSummary objects from the database. (In this case there may not be much of a difference, but in other cases it can be substantial).

How to get the maximum length of a string from an EDMX model in code?

I've created an EDMX object from a database I'm programming against.
I need to get input from a user and save it to a row in the database table. The problem is that I need to limit the length of input strings to the width of the corresponding VARCHAR column in the database.
When I browse the model, I can clearly see in the properties window that the model knows the max length of the string, but I don't know how to access this data in code.
If I want to write something like this:
Entities entities = new Entities();
myTable = entities.myTable.First();
if (userInput.length > myTable.columnA.MaxLength)
{
// tell the user that the input is too long.
}
else
{
myTable.columnA = userInput;
}
How do I write it?
Update: I would like to point out that the IObjectContextAdapater mentioned in the answers below is in the System.Data.Entity.Infrastructure namespace.
Here are two methods by which you can read the meta data:
int? GetMaxLength(DbContext context, string tableName, string propertyName)
{
var oc = ((IObjectContextAdapter)context).ObjectContext;
return oc.MetadataWorkspace.GetItems(DataSpace.CSpace).OfType<EntityType>()
.Where(et => et.Name == tableName)
.SelectMany(et => et.Properties.Where(p => p.Name == propertyName))
.Select (p => p.MaxLength)
.FirstOrDefault();
}
int? GetMaxLength<T>(DbContext context, Expression<Func<T, object>> property)
{
var memberExpression = (MemberExpression)property.Body;
string propertyName = memberExpression.Member.Name;
return GetMaxLength(context, typeof(T).Name, propertyName);
}
So you can either enter the table name and property name, or an expression that specifies the property you're interested in.
Another approach could be to create a MetaData class and use the MaxLength attribute.
It's not very pretty; reading edmx properties at runtime is not something Microsoft exposed easily or documented well (or in some cases, at all). context is your DBContext.
var objectContext = ((IObjectContextAdapter)context).ObjectContext;
var entityType = objectContext.MetadataWorkspace.GetItems<EntityType>(DataSpace.CSpace).Where(e => e.Name == "your entity name").First();
var facets = entityType.Properties["your property name"].TypeUsage.Facets;
facets will look something like this, so you'll need to look for the MaxLength Name(may not exist, depending on the underlying field type) and get the Value:
Count = 5
[0]: Nullable=false
[1]: DefaultValue=null
[2]: MaxLength=250
[3]: Unicode=false
[4]: FixedLength=false
If you modify the T4 template you can add your own attribute to the properties that have MaxLength set.
If you can find the right place to add it, it's something as simple as this:
var lengthAttributeText = edmProperty.MaxLength.HasValue
? string.Format("[MaxLength({0})] ", edmProperty.MaxLength.Value)
: "";
And then add this into the text for the property line. (Tricky to be more detailed since I've already modified my .tt file a lot; also the lack of proper IDE support for .tt files makes this a lot harder than it could be.)

Linq to select top 1 related entity

How can I include a related entity, but only select the top 1?
public EntityFramework.Member Get(string userName)
{
var query = from member in context.Members
.Include(member => member.Renewals)
where member.UserName == userName
select member;
return query.SingleOrDefault();
}
According to MSDN:
"Note that it is not currently possible to filter which related entities are loaded. Include will always bring in all related entities."
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/jj574232
There is also a uservoice item for this functionality:
http://data.uservoice.com/forums/72025-entity-framework-feature-suggestions/suggestions/1015345-allow-filtering-for-include-extension-method
The approach to use an anonymous object works, even though it's not clean as you wish it would be:
public Member GetMember(string username)
{
var result = (from m in db.Members
where m.Username == username
select new
{
Member = m,
FirstRenewal = m.Renewals.FirstOrDefault()
}).AsEnumerable().Select(r => r.Member).FirstOrDefault();
return result;
}
The FirstRenewal property is used just to make EF6 load the first renewal into the Member object. As a result the Member returned from the GetMember() method contains only the first renewal.
This code generates a single Query to the DB, so maybe it's good enough for You.

How to do recursive load with Entity framework?

I have a tree structure in the DB with TreeNodes table. the table has nodeId, parentId and parameterId. in the EF, The structure is like TreeNode.Children where each child is a TreeNode...
I also have a Tree table with contain id,name and rootNodeId.
At the end of the day I would like to load the tree into a TreeView but I can't figure how to load it all at once.
I tried:
var trees = from t in context.TreeSet.Include("Root").Include("Root.Children").Include("Root.Children.Parameter")
.Include("Root.Children.Children")
where t.ID == id
select t;
This will get me the the first 2 generations but not more.
How do I load the entire tree with all generations and the additional data?
I had this problem recently and stumbled across this question after I figured a simple way to achieve results. I provided an edit to Craig's answer providing a 4th method, but the powers-that-be decided it should be another answer. That's fine with me :)
My original question / answer can be found here.
This works so long as your items in the table all know which tree they belong to (which in your case it looks like they do: t.ID). That said, it's not clear what entities you really have in play, but even if you've got more than one, you must have a FK in the entity Children if that's not a TreeSet
Basically, just don't use Include():
var query = from t in context.TreeSet
where t.ID == id
select t;
// if TreeSet.Children is a different entity:
var query = from c in context.TreeSetChildren
// guessing the FK property TreeSetID
where c.TreeSetID == id
select c;
This will bring back ALL the items for the tree and put them all in the root of the collection. At this point, your result set will look like this:
-- Item1
-- Item2
-- Item3
-- Item4
-- Item5
-- Item2
-- Item3
-- Item5
Since you probably want your entities coming out of EF only hierarchically, this isn't what you want, right?
.. then, exclude descendants present at the root level:
Fortunately, because you have navigation properties in your model, the child entity collections will still be populated as you can see by the illustration of the result set above. By manually iterating over the result set with a foreach() loop, and adding those root items to a new List<TreeSet>(), you will now have a list with root elements and all descendants properly nested.
If your trees get large and performance is a concern, you can sort your return set ASCENDING by ParentID (it's Nullable, right?) so that all the root items are first. Iterate and add as before, but break from the loop once you get to one that is not null.
var subset = query
// execute the query against the DB
.ToList()
// filter out non-root-items
.Where(x => !x.ParentId.HasValue);
And now subset will look like this:
-- Item1
-- Item2
-- Item3
-- Item4
-- Item5
About Craig's solutions:
You really don't want to use lazy loading for this!! A design built around the necessity for n+1 querying will be a major performance sucker. ********* (Well, to be fair, if you're going to allow a user to selectively drill down the tree, then it could be appropriate. Just don't use lazy loading for getting them all up-front!!)I've never tried the nested set stuff, and I wouldn't suggest hacking EF configuration to make this work either, given there is a far easier solution. Another reasonable suggestion is creating a database view that provides the self-linking, then map that view to an intermediary join/link/m2m table. Personally, I found this solution to be more complicated than necessary, but it probably has its uses.
When you use Include(), you are asking the Entity Framework to translate your query into SQL. So think: How would you write an SQL statement which returns a tree of an arbitrary depth?
Answer: Unless you are using specific hierarchy features of your database server (which are not SQL standard, but supported by some servers, such as SQL Server 2008, though not by its Entity Framework provider), you wouldn't. The usual way to handle trees of arbitrary depth in SQL is to use the nested sets model rather than the parent ID model.
Therefore, there are three ways which you can use to solve this problem:
Use the nested sets model. This requires changing your metadata.
Use SQL Server's hierarchy features, and hack the Entity Framework into understanding them (tricky, but this technique might work). Again, you'll need to change your metadata.i
Use explicit loading or EF 4's lazy loading instead of eager loading. This will result in many database queries instead of one.
I wanted to post up my answer since the others didn't help me.
My database is a little different, basically my table has an ID and a ParentID. The table is recursive. The following code gets all children and nests them into a final list.
public IEnumerable<Models.MCMessageCenterThread> GetAllMessageCenterThreads(int msgCtrId)
{
var z = Db.MCMessageThreads.Where(t => t.ID == msgCtrId)
.Select(t => new MCMessageCenterThread
{
Id = t.ID,
ParentId = t.ParentID ?? 0,
Title = t.Title,
Body = t.Body
}).ToList();
foreach (var t in z)
{
t.Children = GetChildrenByParentId(t.Id);
}
return z;
}
private IEnumerable<MCMessageCenterThread> GetChildrenByParentId(int parentId)
{
var children = new List<MCMessageCenterThread>();
var threads = Db.MCMessageThreads.Where(x => x.ParentID == parentId);
foreach (var t in threads)
{
var thread = new MCMessageCenterThread
{
Id = t.ID,
ParentId = t.ParentID ?? 0,
Title = t.Title,
Body = t.Body,
Children = GetChildrenByParentId(t.ID)
};
children.Add(thread);
}
return children;
}
For completeness, here's my model:
public class MCMessageCenterThread
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public int ParentId { get; set; }
public string Title { get; set; }
public string Body { get; set; }
public IEnumerable<MCMessageCenterThread> Children { get; set; }
}
I wrote something recently that does N+1 selects to load the whole tree, where N is the number of levels of your deepest path in the source object.
This is what I did, given the following self-referencing class
public class SomeEntity
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public int? ParentId { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set;
}
I wrote the following DbSet helper
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Linq.Expressions;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
namespace Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore
{
public static class DbSetExtensions
{
public static async Task<TEntity[]> FindRecursiveAsync<TEntity, TKey>(
this DbSet<TEntity> source,
Expression<Func<TEntity, bool>> rootSelector,
Func<TEntity, TKey> getEntityKey,
Func<TEntity, TKey> getChildKeyToParent)
where TEntity: class
{
// Keeps a track of already processed, so as not to invoke
// an infinte recursion
var alreadyProcessed = new HashSet<TKey>();
TEntity[] result = await source.Where(rootSelector).ToArrayAsync();
TEntity[] currentRoots = result;
while (currentRoots.Length > 0)
{
TKey[] currentParentKeys = currentRoots.Select(getEntityKey).Except(alreadyProcessed).ToArray();
alreadyProcessed.AddRange(currentParentKeys);
Expression<Func<TEntity, bool>> childPredicate = x => currentParentKeys.Contains(getChildKeyToParent(x));
currentRoots = await source.Where(childPredicate).ToArrayAsync();
}
return result;
}
}
}
Whenever you need to load a whole tree you simply call this method, passing in three things
The selection criteria for your root objects
How to get the property for the primary key of the object (SomeEntity.Id)
How to get the child's property that refers to its parent (SomeEntity.ParentId)
For example
SomeEntity[] myEntities = await DataContext.SomeEntity.FindRecursiveAsync(
rootSelector: x => x.Id = 42,
getEntityKey: x => x.Id,
getChildKeyToParent: x => x.ParentId).ToArrayAsync();
);
Alternatively, if you can add a RootId column to the table then for each non-root entry you can set this column to the ID of the root of the tree. Then you can fetch everything with a single select
DataContext.SomeEntity.Where(x => x.Id == rootId || x.RootId == rootId)
For an example of loading in child objects, I'll give the example of a Comment object that holds a comment. Each comment has a possible child comment.
private static void LoadComments(<yourObject> q, Context yourContext)
{
if(null == q | null == yourContext)
{
return;
}
yourContext.Entry(q).Reference(x=> x.Comment).Load();
Comment curComment = q.Comment;
while(null != curComment)
{
curComment = LoadChildComment(curComment, yourContext);
}
}
private static Comment LoadChildComment(Comment c, Context yourContext)
{
if(null == c | null == yourContext)
{
return null;
}
yourContext.Entry(c).Reference(x=>x.ChildComment).Load();
return c.ChildComment;
}
Now if you were having something that has collections of itself you would need to use Collection instead of Reference and do the same sort of diving down. At least that's the approach I took in this scenario as we were dealing with Entity and SQLite.
This is an old question, but the other answers either had n+1 database hits or their models were conducive to bottom-up (trunk to leaves) approaches. In this scenario, a tag list is loaded as a tree, and a tag can have multiple parents. The approach I use only has two database hits: the first to get the tags for the selected articles, then another that eager loads a join table. Thus, this uses a top-down (leaves to trunk) approach; if your join table is large or if the result cannot really be cached for reuse, then eager loading the whole thing starts to show the tradeoffs with this approach.
To begin, I initialize two HashSets: one to hold the root nodes (the resultset), and another to keep a reference to each node that has been "hit."
var roots = new HashSet<AncestralTagDto>(); //no parents
var allTags = new HashSet<AncestralTagDto>();
Next, I grab all of the leaves that the client requested, placing them into an object that holds a collection of children (but that collection will remain empty after this step).
var startingTags = await _dataContext.ArticlesTags
.Include(p => p.Tag.Parents)
.Where(t => t.Article.CategoryId == categoryId)
.GroupBy(t => t.Tag)
.ToListAsync()
.ContinueWith(resultTask =>
resultTask.Result.Select(
grouping => new AncestralTagDto(
grouping.Key.Id,
grouping.Key.Name)));
Now, let's grab the tag self-join table, and load it all into memory:
var tagRelations = await _dataContext.TagsTags.Include(p => p.ParentTag).ToListAsync();
Now, for each tag in startingTags, add that tag to the allTags collection, then travel down the tree to get the ancestors recursively:
foreach (var tag in startingTags)
{
allTags.Add(tag);
GetParents(tag);
}
return roots;
Lastly, here's the nested recursive method that builds the tree:
void GetParents(AncestralTagDto tag)
{
var parents = tagRelations.Where(c => c.ChildTagId == tag.Id).Select(p => p.ParentTag);
if (parents.Any()) //then it's not a root tag; keep climbing down
{
foreach (var parent in parents)
{
//have we already seen this parent tag before? If not, instantiate the dto.
var parentDto = allTags.SingleOrDefault(i => i.Id == parent.Id);
if (parentDto is null)
{
parentDto = new AncestralTagDto(parent.Id, parent.Name);
allTags.Add(parentDto);
}
parentDto.Children.Add(tag);
GetParents(parentDto);
}
}
else //the tag is a root tag, and should be in the root collection. If it's not in there, add it.
{
//this block could be simplified to just roots.Add(tag), but it's left this way for other logic.
var existingRoot = roots.SingleOrDefault(i => i.Equals(tag));
if (existingRoot is null)
roots.Add(tag);
}
}
Under the covers, I am relying on the properties of a HashSet to prevent duplicates. To that end, it's important that the intermediate object that you use (I used AncestralTagDto here, and its Children collection is also a HashSet), override the Equals and GetHashCode methods as appropriate for your use-case.