Question

I have a public method called LoadContact() in the Contact class. I want to load the contact data using Linq and assign the values to ‘this’ instance.

So far I have …..

var contact = (from cont in db.Contacts
    from note in db.Contacts_Notes.Where(n => n.ContactID == cont.ContactID).DefaultIfEmpty()
    where cont.AccountID == this.AccountID && cont.ContactID == this.ContactID
    select new Contact
    {
        AccountID = cont.AccountID,
        CompanyName = cont.CompanyName,
        ContactID = cont.ContactID,
        Firstname = cont.Firstname,
        JobTitle = cont.JobTitle,
        Lastname = cont.Lastname,
        Notes = note.Note
    }).SingleOrDefault();

if(contact != null)
{
    this.AccountID = contact.AccountID;
    this.CompanyName = contact.CompanyName etc etc etc
}

.,.. but this seems really long winded. How can I assign the results directly to the current instance?

Answer 1

Is there a reason why you don’t make it a static method which return a new contact? The way you wants to do it looks like bad design (depending on why you do it).

I would suggest you made it static so it could be used like:

var contact = Contact.Load(...);

instead of

var contact = new Contact();
contact.LoadContact(...);

This way you would be able to just return the contact you found with your query like:

public static Load(int contactID, int accountID) //If they are integers
{
    return (from cont in db.Contacts
        from note in db.Contacts_Notes.Where(n => n.ContactID == cont.ContactID).DefaultIfEmpty()
        where cont.AccountID == accountID && cont.ContactID == contactID
        select new Contact
        {
            //... stuff
        }).SingleOrDefault();
}