I have an object hierarchy that looks something like this:
public class Book
{
public virtual List<Page> Pages { get; set; }
public virtual List<Paragraph> Paragraphs { get; set; }
}
public class Page
{
public virtual List<Paragraph> Paragraphs { get; set; }
}
I want to load the complete object hierarchy and am going about that like this:
Book book = (from b in context.Books.Include("Pages").Include("Paragraphs")
.Include("Pages.Paragraphs") where CONDITION).SingleOrDefault();
I find that book.Pages and book.Paragraphs are loaded, but book.Pages[i].Paragraphs is null.
Examining the database, the data looks correct (association columns are all correctly populated).
I also tried the lamda syntax, but do not see how that could work when the parameter is a collection rather than an entity, e.g. one can do something like this:
.Include(s => s.Paragraphs.Select(p => p.Id == 1)
but I do not see how one could use the lamda syntax to specify that the Paragraphs collection for each Page in book.Pages should be loaded.
Am I missing something, or is this a limitation of Entity Framework? If it's a limitation, how can I work around it?
In the actual code (not the code boiled down for the purpose of asking a targeted question, I was missing a virtual keyword. EF didn't complain about an inability to load the additional data requested through .Include("Pages.Paragraphs"), it just silently ignored that request.
public class Page
{
public /* was missing: virtual*/ List<Paragraph> Paragraphs { get; set; }
}
Related
Is there a way to configure AutoMapper to adhere to the .Include style loading instructions for Entity Framework?
I've disabled lazy loading for my context, and I want to conditionally load related data for particular entities. Ideally, I'd like to do this by using an include syntax. Something like:
if(loadAddreses)
{
query = query.Include(e => e.Addresses);
}
if(loadEmails)
{
query = query.Include(e => e.Emails);
}
The problem is, AutoMapper is seeing that the model I'm projecting to includes Addresses and E-mails, and is generating SQL that loads all that data regardless of what I've asked EF to include. In other words:
var model = query.Project.To<MyModel>();
If MyModel has an Addresses collection, it will load addresses, regardless of my Include statements.
Short of changing my model so that I have one that doesn't have an Addresses or Emails property, is there a way to fix this? I suppose I could change my mapping, but mappings are usually static and don't change after they're initially created.
This was kind of tricky to tease out, but see how this works for you. Note that I'm using version 3.3.0-ci1027 of AutoMapper (at the time of writing this was a pre-release).
Assume my data model looks like this:
public class Address
{
[Key]
[DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
public int AddressId { get; set; }
public string Text { get; set; }
}
public class Email
{
[Key]
[DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
public int EmailId { get; set; }
public string Text { get; set; }
}
public class User
{
[Key]
[DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
public int UserId { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<Address> Addresses { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<Email> Emails { get; set; }
public User()
{
this.Addresses = new List<Address>();
this.Emails = new List<Email>();
}
}
My view models are not specified but they just contain the same properties as the entities.
My mapping from User to UserViewModel looks like this:
Mapper.CreateMap<User, UserViewModel>()
.ForMember(x => x.Emails, opt => opt.ExplicitExpansion())
.ForMember(x => x.Addresses, opt => opt.ExplicitExpansion());
And my projection looks like this:
var viewModels = context.Set<User>().Project()
.To<UserViewModel>(new { }, u => u.Emails).ToList();
With that mapping and projection, only the Emails collection is loaded. The important parts to this are the opt => opt.ExplicitExpansion() call in the mapping - which prevents a navigation property being followed unless explicitly expanded during projection, and the overloaded To method. This overload allows you to specify parameters (which I've left as an empty object), and the members you wish to expand (in this case just the Emails).
The one thing I'm not sure of at this stage is the precise mechanism to extract the details from the Include statements so you can in turn pass them into the To method, but hopefully this gives you something to work with.
I have found a solution that works (using DTOs and AutoMapper), which is reproduced below, but I would prefer an answer that lists the different approaches to the problem with examples and this will be marked as the answer if received.
In my entity model I have a navigation property that goes from a child entity to the parent entity. My project was working swimmingly. Then I began to use AutoFixture for unit testing, and testing failed, AutoFixture saying I had a circular reference.
Now, I realise that circular reference navigation properties like this are OK within Entity Framework, but I found this post (Use value of a parent property when creating a complex child in AutoFixture), where Mark Seemann, the creator of AutoFixture states:
"For the record, I haven't written an API with a circular reference for years, so it's quite possible to avoid those Parent/Child relations."
So, I want to understand HOW a domain model can be refactored to avoid child/parent relations.
Below are the entity classes in question, the repository method, and how I use the property causing the circular reference in my View. The perfect answer would explain the different options I could choose from with examples, and the basic pros/cons of each approach.
Note: The property causing the circular reference is User, in the UserTeam model.
Models:
public class UserProfile
{
public UserProfile()
{
UserTeams = new HashSet<UserTeam>();
Games = new HashSet<Game>();
}
[Key]
[DatabaseGeneratedAttribute(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
public int UserId { get; set; }
public string UserName { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<UserTeam> UserTeams { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<Game> Games { get; set; }
}
public class Game
{
public Game()
{
UserTeams = new HashSet<UserTeam>();
}
public int Id { get; set; }
public int CreatorId { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<UserTeam> UserTeams { get; set; }
}
public class UserTeam
{
public UserTeam()
{
UserTeam_Players = new HashSet<UserTeam_Player>();
}
public int Id { get; set; }
public int UserId { get; set; }
public int GameId { get; set; }
public virtual UserProfile User { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<UserTeam_Player> UserTeam_Players { get; set; }
}
Repository Method
public IEnumerable<Game> GetAllGames()
{
using (DataContext)
{
var _games = DataContext.Games
.Include(x => x.UserTeams)
.Include(x => x.UserTeams.Select(y => y.User))
.ToList();
if (_games == null)
{
// log error
return null;
}
return _games;
}
}
View
#model IEnumerable<Game>
#foreach (var item in Model){
foreach (var userteam in item.UserTeams){
<p>#userteam.User.UserName</p>
}
}
Now, if I remove the 'User' navigation property, I wouldn't be able to do '#userteam.User.UserName'
So, how do I refactor the domain model to remove the circular reference, whilst being able to easily loop through Games, and do something like
UserTeam.User.Username?
I had a similar problem with AutoFixture and EntityFramework a while ago. My solution was to add an extension to AutoFixture, that allows you to build a SUT with a few recursions. That extension has recently been adopted in AutoFixture.
But I understand that your question was not about how to make AutoFixture construct recursive data structures, which is indeed possible, but how to create domain models without recursion.
First, you have tree or graph structures. Here anything but recursion would mean indirection through loose coupled node ids. Instead of defining an association, you would have to traverse the tree query-by-query or cache the whole thing and traverse by node-key lookup, which may be impractical depending on the tree-size. Here it is very convenient to make EF do the work for you.
The other common structure is a two-way navigational structure similar to your user / game scenario. Here it is often not that inconvenient to prune the navigation flow to a single direction. If you omit one direction, say from game to team, you can still easily query all teams for a given game. So: User has a list of games and a list of teams. Team has a list of games. Games have no navigational reference to either. To get all users for a specific game you could write something like:
var users = (from user in DataContext.Users
from game in user.Games
where game.Name == 'Chess'
select user).Distinct()
I have found a solution that works (using DTOs and AutoMapper), which is reproduced below, but I would still prefer an answer that lists the different approaches to the problem with examples, in particular whether this is a desirable solution, or whether I should stick with the navigation properties as they were, get rid of AutoFixture, and when it comes to serializing for json just utilise other work arounds (attributes etc)...
So, in my View Model, I added a couple of classes:
public class GameDTO
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public int CreatorId { get; set; }
public ICollection<UserTeamDTO> UserTeamsDTO { get; set; }
}
public class UserTeamDTO : UserTeam
{
public UserProfile User { get; set; }
}
And in my controller, I use AutoMapper to map the Game / UserTeam objects from the repository to my DTO objects, and return the IList _gamesDto to the View.
var _games = _gameRepository.GetAllGames();
IList<GameDTO> _gamesDto = new List<GameDTO>();
IList<UserTeamDTO> _userteamsDto = new List<UserTeamDTO>();
GameDTO _gameDto = new GameDTO();
UserTeamDTO _userteamDto = new UserTeamDTO();
Mapper.CreateMap<Game, GameDTO>();
Mapper.CreateMap<UserTeam, UserTeamDTO>();
foreach (Game _game in _games)
{
foreach (UserTeam _userteam in _game.UserTeams)
{
_userteamDto = Mapper.Map<UserTeamDTO>(_userteam);
_userteamDto.User = _userRepository.GetUser(_userteam.UserId);
_userteamsDto.Add(_userteamDto);
}
_gameDto = Mapper.Map<GameDTO>(_game);
_gameDto.UserTeamsDTO = _userteamsDto;
_gamesDto.Add(_gameDto);
}
I had a similar problem recently which also impacted serializing JSON objects. I decided to remove the circular references from my data model.
I first removed the redundant navigation properties which were creating the circular references. I made sure that my resulting tree of data made sense. This allowed me to make it clear which objects own which relationships.
This also made EF unable to automatically reason about my relationships. I had to specify the One-to-Many and Many-to-Many relationships using the FluentAPI. I found a solution here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/16719203/1887885
Hope this is helpful.
I haven't been able to find someone else with this issue specifically so here goes.
I have a simple model where one entity simply references another as a parent-child or one-to-many relationship defined like this:
public class Parent
{
public int ID { get; private set; }
public string Name { get; private set; }
}
public class Child
{
public int ID { get; private set; }
public string Name { get; private set; }
public virtual Parent Parent { get; private set; }
}
I am creating speicific mapping files for each, which work great for all the normal properties except for the related entity. It is always coming up null. No matter whether i have the virtual/private accessors on the property it will not load UNLESS i pull a copy of the parent separately from the context first. My mapping looks like this:
HasRequired(t => t.Parent).WithMany().Map(t => t.MapKey("ParentID")).WillCascadeOnDelete();
Is there anything I am doing wrong with this? I cannot for the life of me figure this out. Just so I cover all the bases, I am loading the entity like this:
Context.Set<Child>().FirstOrDefault(x => x.ID == 1);
And lastly here are some constraints I have:
I cannot have the foreign keys in my model as properties.
I cannot have a collection of children from the parent.
I finally figured it out. After much trial and error I noticed that having a parameterless constructor marked as internal, EF cannot create its dynamic proxy class of your type and therefore disables all lazy loading. I have two contructors, one for EF to hydrate objects, and another with parameters requires for callers to create my entity. Once I changed the signature to protected internal it started working. So I changed this:
internal Child() {}
to
protected internal Child() {}
May be you hasn't enable lazy loading .Try this,
Context.Set<Child>().FirstOrDefault(x => x.ID == 1).Include(c=>c.Parent);
I'm using Entity Framework Code First. The class i'm trying to create contains two collections (of the same type). I'm having problem recovering my respective collections.
My classes look like this:
public class Destination
{
public int DestinationId { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
public List<Lodging> Lodgings { get; set; }
public List<Lodging> Lodgings2 { get; set; }
}
public class Lodging
{
public int LodgingId { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
public Destination Destination { get; set; }
}
I created a new Destination, then I reopened (closed & opened) the database connection. When I retrieve the destination, my collections (dest.Lodgings and dest.Lodgings2) are null. How do I restore the respective collections? If my class only has one collection of a particular type, I could do the following:
var lodgings = context.Lodgings.Where(l => l.Destination.DestinationId == destId).ToList();
I can see that the relationships are maintained in the database schema (Destination_DestinationId1 and Destination_DestinationId2) but I don't seem to be able to get to them.
Any suggestion would be appreciated.
In addition to using Include (as you've discovered) (which loads the related data from the db at the same time the destination is retrieved) you can also retreive the lodgings after the fact. So if you query for the destination and then you want the lodgings, that's possible. One way is called explicit loading where you will use a Load method. The other is with lazy loading, which requires that your classes be set up a particular way and just the mere mention of the Lodgings property will trigger the call to the database to retrieve them.
there's a great blog post on the Ef team blog about the various ways to load related data with DbContext : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/adonet/archive/2011/01/31/using-dbcontext-in-ef-feature-ctp5-part-6-loading-related-entities.aspx
hth
Julie
A little new to EF, so please bear with me if the answer to this is obvious. I'm doing a tutorial that uses EF, and two DbSets are defined like this:
public DbSet<BrokerageAccount> BrokerageAccounts { get; set; }
public DbSet<Customer> Customers { get; set; }
The customer class looks like this-- it's a POCO (some code cut for brevity):
public class Customer
{
public Customer()
{
BrokerageAccounts = new HashSet<BrokerageAccount>();
}
// Primitive properties
public int Id { get; set; }
public string FirstName { get; set; }
public string LastName { get; set; }
// Navigation properties
public ICollection<BrokerageAccount> BrokerageAccounts { get; set; }
}
}
The BrokerageAccount class is a POCO as well, very similar in design to Customer.
So far so good. The code I have a question about is below. There is an association made in the main program between Customer and BrokerageAccount that I don't follow. The code reads like this:
public Customer GetCustomer(string custId)
{
using (var context = DataContext)
{
return context.Customers
.Include("BrokerageAccounts").SingleOrDefault(c => c.CustomerCode == custId);
}
}
I can't figure out how the association/join is made between Customer and BrokerageAccount. I don't see any config or other files in my VS 2010 project that tells what associates the two DbSets, what foreign key column to use, etc.
Perhaps I'm missing something obvious or a mapping file of some sort, but just because Customer has an ICollection of BrokerageAccount along with a comment above that says "Navigation Properties", doesn't make it so. In EF, how are those associations established?
The normal way of setting up the navigation properties is to use the ModelBuilder, This gives you a fluent api to set up the associations, take a look at this for some in depth stuff about how you go about this.
http://xhalent.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/configuring-entity-framework-4-codefirst/
Entity framework will guess at what you meant if you dont set up the nav properties manually, in the above case it will probably set up your nav properties as expected as you only have a single 1-* relationship between customer and BrokerageAccount which appears to be named sensibly.
There is also an attribute method that you can use to set up the navigation properties.