DevForce Community Forum : options.Include of navigation property collections

options.Include of navigation property collections : I agree - magic strings are asking...

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:41:22 -700

Author: stephenmcd1
Subject: 4150
Posted: 15-May-2013 at 2:41pm

I agree - magic strings are asking for trouble.

I've update the code sample to include the MIT license which as far as I know means you can use it in just about any way you'd like. I'm not an expert on licensing so if that doesn't work for you, let me know.

Glad the code will work for you!

options.Include of navigation property collections : Stephen, Do you have a license...

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:12:50 -700

Author: KitKat
Subject: 4150
Posted: 15-May-2013 at 1:12pm

Stephen,

Do you have a license for the code you linked, or is it public domain and free for me to use?

Thank you,

Katerina

options.Include of navigation property collections : Thank you all for your responses.Stephan,...

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:09:45 -700

Author: KitKat
Subject: 4150
Posted: 15-May-2013 at 1:09pm

Thank you all for your responses.

Stephan, this is exactly what I was looking for. I like to stay as far away from Magic Strings as I can.

Thank you all again,

Katerina

options.Include of navigation property collections : I've built a helper class...

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:09:16 -700

Author: stephenmcd1
Subject: 4150
Posted: 15-May-2013 at 12:09pm

I've built a helper class that builds strings such as 'Employee.Jobs.LwHrJob' using strongly typed lambdas. It's not always the easiest to use but it gets the job done. And for us, a little bit of annoyance/verbosity when first writing the code is worth it if it saves of from running into problems if the model changes. An example usage of the helper class would be:

    [TestMethod]    public void TestBuildPath()
    {
        var actualPath = IncludeHelper
            .BuildPathFor()
            .Include(user => user.Employee)
            .IncludeMany(employee => employee.Jobs)
            .Include(job => job.Detail)
            .ToString();

        Assert.AreEqual("Employee.Jobs.Detail", actualPath);

    }

In this case, the IncludeMany method is the one that is really giving us value because it lets us 'flatten' the collection.

You can get the full code from here: https://gist.github.com/stephenmcd1/5586462

options.Include of navigation property collections : The extension method is a good...

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:05:02 -700

Author: mgood
Subject: 4150
Posted: 15-May-2013 at 11:05am

The extension method is a good idea. Other than that you can't strongly type it because Employee.Jobs.LwHrJob would mean that LwHrJob is a property of the Jobs collection when in fact it is a property of each item in the Jobs collection. You won't get this past the compiler.

options.Include of navigation property collections : i wrote an extension method for...

Wed, 15 May 2013 09:45:17 -700

Author: smi-mark
Subject: 4150
Posted: 15-May-2013 at 9:45am

i wrote an extension method for queries, you could do the same for the options

    public static class EntityQueryExtensions
    {
        public static IEntityQuery IncludePath(this IEntityQuery query, params string[] propertyPaths)
        {
            return query.Include(propertyPaths.Aggregate((a, b) => a + "." + b));
        }
    }

something like this:

.IncludePath(Employee.EntityPropertyNames.Jobs, Job.EntityPropertyNames.LwHrJob)

options.Include of navigation property collections : How can you accomplish the strongly...

Wed, 15 May 2013 07:05:09 -700

Author: KitKat
Subject: 4150
Posted: 15-May-2013 at 7:05am

How can you accomplish the strongly typed include when you are navigating past a collection of related entities.

In the example below I have had to define one of my includes as a string since Jobs is a RelatedEntityList, and not just a single entity. Is there some function I am missing that would allow me to strongly type this?

Example:

var punchUser =

(await _punchUser

.FindAsync(e => e.RecordId == punchId

&& e.PunchPin == punchPin,

null,

options =>

options

//.Include(user => user.Employee.Jobs)

.Include("Employee.Jobs.LwHrJob")

.Include(user => user.Employee.OrgLevel1)

.Include(user => user.Employee.OrgLevel2)

.Include(user => user.Employee.OrgLevel3)

.Include(user => user.Employee.OrgLevel4)

.Include(user => user.Employee.OrgLevel5)

)).FirstOrDefault();

Thank you,

Kat