Include nested entities using LINQ

Question

I\'m messing around with LINQ for the first time, and I\'m using EF 4.1 code first.

I have entities containing nested Lists of other entities, for example:

Answer 1

Use Include. This is the purpose of Include, and there's no reason to write a bunch of nested select statements.

context.Releases.Include("OriginalTracks.OriginalArtist")
    .Where(release => release.ReleaseID == id);

This is simpler to write, simpler to read, and preserves your existing data structure.

To use Include you need to specify the name of the property you want to return - this means the name as it exists in your code, not in the database. For example:

• .Include("OriginalTracks") will include the OriginalTracks property on each Release
• .Include("OriginalTracks.OriginalArtist") will include OriginalTracks property on each Release, and the OriginalArtist on each Track (note that it's not possible - syntactically or logically - to include an OriginalArtist within including the OriginalTrack)
• .Include("OriginalTracks").Include("OtherProperty") will include the OriginalTracks and OtherProperty objects on each Release.

You can chain as many of these as you like, for example:

.Include("Tracks.Artist").Include("AnotherProperty")
    .Include("ThirdProperty.SomeItems").Where(r => r.something);

is perfectly valid. The only requirement is that you put the Include on the EntitySet, not on a query - you can't .Where().Include().