Does the Entity Framework have an equivalent of DataContext.GetTable from Linq2Sql (ObjectContext.CreateQuery?)

Question

I\'m looking for an equivalent of the DataContext.GetTable in Entity Framework. I\'ve found the ObjectContext.CreateQuery m

Answer 1

Actually, the EF designer itself uses CreateQuery with hard-coded strings for the static references. If you dig into the designer file you'll see something like this:

public global::System.Data.Objects.ObjectQuery Customers
{
    get
    {
        if ((this._Customers == null))
        {
            this._Customers = base.CreateQuery("[Customers]");
        }
        return this._Customers;
    }
}

private global::System.Data.Objects.ObjectQuery _Customers;

Technically there's no perfect solution because you can use the same entity type for different entity sets. But you can give it the old college try:

public IQueryable GetEntities()
{
    Type t = typeof(TEntity);
    var edmAttr = (EdmEntityTypeAttribute)Attribute.GetCustomAttribute(t,
        typeof(EdmEntityTypeAttribute), false);
    if (edmAttr == null)  // Fall back to the naive way
    {
        return context.CreateQuery(t.Name);
    }
    var ec = context.MetadataWorkspace.GetEntityContainer(
        context.DefaultContainerName, DataSpace.CSpace);
    var entityType = context.MetadataWorkspace.GetType(edmAttr.Name,
        edmAttr.NamespaceName, DataSpace.CSpace);
    var es = ec.BaseEntitySets.First(es => es.ElementType == entityType);
    return context.CreateQuery(es.Name);
}