Question

I have a Model, which is below:

[Table("WebsiteText")]
public class WebsiteTextModel
{
    [Key]
    [DatabaseGeneratedAttribute(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
    public int ID { get; set; }

    public string WebsiteSection { get; set; }

    [DataType(DataType.MultilineText)]
    public string TextToDisplay { get; set; }
}

I have a DataContext class, which is below:

public class WebsiteTextContext : DbContext
{
    public WebsiteTextContext()
        : base("DefaultConnection")
    {

    }

    public DbSet<WebsiteTextModel> WebsiteText { get; set; }
}

I want to use LINQ to get the website text for my homepage, and stuff it into the ViewBag, so I am trying this:

public ActionResult Index()
{
    var context = new WebsiteTextContext();

    var result = from x in context.WebsiteText
                 where x.WebsiteSection == "Home Page"
                 select x.TextToDisplay;

    ViewBag.Message = result;

    return View();
}

However var is IQueryable, and I can’t figure out how to get it to string. This doesn’t work:

string result = from x in context.WebsiteText
    where x.WebsiteSection == "Home Page"
    select x.TextToDisplay;

This doesn’t work:

var result = from x in context.WebsiteText
    where x.WebsiteSection == "Home Page"
    select x.TextToDisplay.ToString; //It's still IQueryable<String>

And this doesn’t work:

var result = from x in context.WebsiteText
    where x.WebsiteSection == "Home Page"
    select x.TextToDisplay.ToArray; //It's now IQueryable<char[]>

What do I need to do?

Answer 1

string result = (from x in context.WebsiteText
where x.WebsiteSection == "Home Page"
select x.TextToDisplay).FirstOrDefault();

You also have First and Single and SingleOrDefault

Look them all up and pick which version works best for you.