Question

I am working with asp.net mvc 4 and entity framework code-first approach. I have the following entity model

public class User
{
    public virtual int Id { get; set; }
    public virtual String FirstName { get; set; }
    public virtual String MiddleName { get; set; }
    public virtual String LastName { get; set; }
}

For the user list view page I need to show Full Name, I am trying to create a get only property in user model like

public virtual String FullName{
    get{
        return FirstName + " " + MiddleName + " " + LastName;
    }
}

But I am not sure if it will work, besides I also don’t want entity framework to map this to a database column.

Can I use similar get only property generated from other properties for only view?
Can any one can give me any suggestion on what to do??

Answer 1

Depending on how you are configuring your Domain Entities, via DataAnnotations or EntityConfigurationType classes, you could either use the [NotMapped] DataAnnotation

public class User
{
    public virtual int Id { get; set; }
    public virtual String FirstName { get; set; }
    public virtual String MiddleName { get; set; }
    public virtual String LastName { get; set; }
    [NotMapped]
    public virtual String FullName 
    {
        get{
             return FirstName + " " + MiddleName + " " + LastName;
        }
    }
}

or in a specific class that implements EntityTypeConfiguration, you can set the property to be ignored by EntityFramework like so and then add it to your contexts configurations collection in the OnModelCreating event:

public class UserConfiguration : EntityTypeConfiguration<User>
{
    public UserConfiguration()
    {
        Ignore(u=>u.FullName);
    }
}