Related
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).
I am trying to use a property on a POCO that uses LINQ to ENTITY to pull the first object out of a HashSet property on the same POCO. My object contains the following:
public virtual HashSet<ScheduleWaypoint> ScheduleWaypoints { get; set; }
public ScheduleWaypoint ArrivalStation {
get {
if (this.ScheduleWaypoints != null && this.ScheduleWaypoints.Count() > 0) {
return this.ScheduleWaypoints.Where(row => row.WaypointType.Type.Trim() == "SA").OrderByDescending(row => row.ScheduledTime).First();
} else
return null;
}
}
If I were working with just one object I can't say for certain if this would work but I know that it does not work inside other linq queries. I don't have access to the ID of the ScheduleWaypoint when creating the object, only after it is populated could I possibly do that. Is there a way that I can get this to work? Right now it is telling me:
The specified type member 'ArivalStation' is not supported in LINQ to
Entities. Only initializers, entity members, and entity navigation
properties are supported.
Is there something I can do to get access to this information on a property rather than constantly doing joins when I need the info?
Thanks.
You cannot use custom properties in linq-to-entities query. Only properties mapped directly to the database can be used = you must have sub query directly in your linq-to-entities query returning your ArrivalStation. Perhaps it can be wrapped as simple extension method:
public static IQueryable<ScheduleWaypoint> GetArrivalStation(this IQueryable<ScheduleWaypoints> waypoints, int routeId)
{
return waypoints.Where(w => w.WaypointType.Type.Trim() == "SA" && w.Route.Id == routeId)
.OrderByDescending(w => w.ScheduledTime)
.FirstOrDefault();
}
Where Route is your principal entity where way points are defined. FirstOrDefault is used because sub queries cannot use just First.
How can I update a single property of a record without retrieving it first?
I'm asking in the context of EF Code First 4.1
Says I have a class User, mapping to table Users in Database:
class User
{
public int Id {get;set;}
[Required]
public string Name {get;set;}
public DateTime LastActivity {get;set;}
...
}
Now I want to update LastActivity of a user. I have user id. I can easily do so by querying the user record, set new value to LastActivity, then call SaveChanges(). But this would result in a redundant query.
I work around by using Attach method. But because EF throws a validation exception on Name if it's null, I set Name to a random string (will not be updated back to DB). But this doesn't seem a elegant solution:
using (var entities = new MyEntities())
{
User u = new User {Id = id, Name="this wont be updated" };
entities.Users.Attach(u);
u.LastActivity = DateTime.Now;
entities.SaveChanges();
}
I would be very appriciate if someone can provide me a better solution. And forgive me for any mistake as this is the first time I've asked a question on SO.
This is a problem of validation implementation. The validation is able to validate only a whole entity. It doesn't validate only modified properties as expected. Because of that the validation should be turned off in scenarios where you want to use incomplete dummy objects:
using (var entities = new MyEntities())
{
entities.Configuration.ValidateOnSaveEnabled = false;
User u = new User {Id = id, LastActivity = DateTime.Now };
entities.Users.Attach(u);
entities.Entry(user).Property(u => u.LastActivity).IsModified = true;
entities.SaveChanges();
}
This is obviously a problem if you want to use the same context for update of dummy objects and for update of whole entities where the validation should be used. The validation take place in SaveChanges so you can't say which objects should be validated and which don't.
I'm actually dealing with this right now. What I decided to do was override the ValidateEntity method in the DB context.
protected override DbEntityValidationResult ValidateEntity(DbEntityEntry entityEntry, IDictionary<object, object> items)
{
var result = base.ValidateEntity(entityEntry, items);
var errors = new List<DbValidationError>();
foreach (var error in result.ValidationErrors)
{
if (entityEntry.Property(error.PropertyName).IsModified)
{
errors.Add(error);
}
}
return new DbEntityValidationResult(entityEntry, errors);
}
I'm sure there's some holes that can be poked in it, but it seemed better than the alternatives.
You can try a sort of hack:
context.Database.ExecuteSqlCommand("update [dbo].[Users] set [LastActivity] = #p1 where [Id] = #p2",
new System.Data.SqlClient.SqlParameter("p1", DateTime.Now),
new System.Data.SqlClient.SqlParameter("p2", id));
It seems to me that I have to retrieve an object before I delete it with entity framework like below
var customer = context.Customers.First(c => c.Id == 1);
context.DeleteObject(customer);
context.Savechanges();
So I need to hit database twice. Is there a easier way?
In Entity Framework 6 the delete action is Remove. Here is an example
Customer customer = new Customer () { Id = id };
context.Customers.Attach(customer);
context.Customers.Remove(customer);
context.SaveChanges();
The same as #Nix with a small change to be strongly typed:
If you don't want to query for it just create an entity, and then delete it.
Customer customer = new Customer () { Id = id };
context.Customers.Attach(customer);
context.Customers.DeleteObject(customer);
context.SaveChanges();
Similar question here.
With Entity Framework there is EntityFramework-Plus (extensions library).
Available on NuGet. Then you can write something like:
// DELETE all users which has been inactive for 2 years
ctx.Users.Where(x => x.LastLoginDate < DateTime.Now.AddYears(-2))
.Delete();
It is also useful for bulk deletes.
If you dont want to query for it just create an entity, and then delete it.
Customer customer = new Customer() { Id = 1 } ;
context.AttachTo("Customers", customer);
context.DeleteObject(customer);
context.Savechanges();
I am using the following code in one of my projects:
using (var _context = new DBContext(new DbContextOptions<DBContext>()))
{
try
{
_context.MyItems.Remove(new MyItem() { MyItemId = id });
await _context.SaveChangesAsync();
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
if (!_context.MyItems.Any(i => i.MyItemId == id))
{
return NotFound();
}
else
{
throw ex;
}
}
}
This way, it will query the database twice only if an exception occurs when trying to remove the item with the specified ID. Then if the item is not found, it returns a meaningful message; otherwise, it just throws the exception back (you can handle this in a way more fit to your case using different catch blocks for different exception types, add more custom checks using if blocks etc.).
[I am using this code in a MVC .Net Core/.Net Core project with Entity Framework Core.]
This answer is actually taken from Scott Allen's course titled ASP.NET MVC 5 Fundamentals. I thought I'd share because I think it is slightly simpler and more intuitive than any of the answers here already. Also note according to Scott Allen and other trainings I've done, find method is an optimized way to retrieve a resource from database that can use caching if it already has been retrieved. In this code, collection refers to a DBSet of objects. Object can be any generic object type.
var object = context.collection.Find(id);
context.collection.Remove(object);
context.SaveChanges();
dwkd's answer mostly worked for me in Entity Framework core, except when I saw this exception:
InvalidOperationException: The instance of entity type 'Customer' cannot
be tracked because another instance with the same key value for {'Id'}
is already being tracked. When attaching existing entities, ensure
that only one entity instance with a given key value is attached.
Consider using 'DbContextOptionsBuilder.EnableSensitiveDataLogging' to
see the conflicting key values.
To avoid the exception, I updated the code:
Customer customer = context.Customers.Local.First(c => c.Id == id);
if (customer == null) {
customer = new Customer () { Id = id };
context.Customers.Attach(customer);
}
context.Customers.Remove(customer);
context.SaveChanges();
A smaller version (when compared to previous ones):
var customer = context.Find(id);
context.Delete(customer);
context.SaveChanges();
In EF Core, if you don't care if the object exists or not, and you just care that it will not be in the DB, the simplest would be:
context.Remove(new Customer(Id: id)); // adds the object in "Deleted" state
context.SaveChanges(); // commits the removal
You don't really need Attach() - it adds the object to the change tracker in the Unchanged state and Remove() adds the object to the tracker in the Deleted state. The most important thing, however, is that you do only one roundtrip to the backend.
Raw sql query is fastest way I suppose
public void DeleteCustomer(int id)
{
using (var context = new Context())
{
const string query = "DELETE FROM [dbo].[Customers] WHERE [id]={0}";
var rows = context.Database.ExecuteSqlCommand(query,id);
// rows >= 1 - count of deleted rows,
// rows = 0 - nothing to delete.
}
}
From official documentation (and the most efficient one I have found so far):
Student studentToDelete = new Student() { ID = id };
_context.Entry(studentToDelete).State = EntityState.Deleted;
await _context.SaveChangesAsync();
Easier and more understandable version.
var customer = context.Find<Customer>(id);
context.Remove(customer);
context.SaveChanges();
Since Entity Framework Core 7 you can use this:
await context.Customers.Where(c => c.Id == 1).ExecuteDeleteAsync();
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.