Question

I’m using Linq to sql to populate my object. Previously, I was using deferred loading and then iterating through my list accessing the child objects to force loading. This isn’t a very good solution with the large data set I have so I am now setting the LoadOptions in my data context to grab it all initially.

The one problem I’ve run into is that before I was manually loading a single property on each iteration through my list and I’m not sure how to accomplish this now. It’s just a simple string value.

 info.CreatedByName = info.CreatedBy.Name;

In my data context, I’m specifying my load options as such:

 DataLoadOptions loadOptions = new DataLoadOptions();
 loadOptions.LoadWith<Info>(info => info.Owner);
 loadOptions.LoadWith<Info>(info => info.CreatedBy);

Is there a way to specify assignment of this property in my load options? Something like:

 loadOptions.LoadWith<Info>(info => info.CreatedByName)

Answer 1

I don’t think that you can use LoadOptions in this way. You could use a projection container class, if you don’t need to perform object tracking, and explicitally set the property upon construction.

from info in context.Infos
select new InfoContainer
{
    CreatedByName = CreatedBy.Name
}

You could add a partial class for Info and add a property that refers to CreatedBy.Name

public string CreatedByName
{
    get
    {
        return CreatedBy.Name;
    }
}

That would assume that the CreatedBy is loaded, or lazy load it if its not populated.