Question

Is It possible to populate a List from within a EF query? My DTO is as follows:

public DTO()
{
  public string ClientName { get; set;}
  public List<string> RelatedCodes { get; set;}
}

My method to populate DTO =

Public DTO MyResult(string ClientCode)
{
   return (from o in repository.RelatedClient 
           where o.LeadCode == ClientCode 
           select new DTO { ClientName = o.ClientName, RelatedCodes = o.RelatedCodes.ToList()});
}

I know I shouldn’t be adding the ToList() within the query or if I can I am doing it very wrong. Can anyone advise how this is done. My DTO is cut down for this example but I want to have lots of single properties and a List<> (or several Lists) in a DTO with one Entity query if possible?

So following answer below I presume there isnt a way to query this direct. My original option would have been:

Public DTO MyResult(string ClientCode)
{
         var temp = (from o in repositry.RelatedCode Where o.LeadCode == ClientCode select o).ToList();

          DTO dto = (from o in repository.LeadClient Where o.LeadCode == ClientCode Select o.ClientName).Firstordefault();

         foreach(string rc in temp)
            {    dto.RelatedCode.Add(rc);}  
         return dto;

  }

I am happy with this but would be grateful if someone could advise if this is the correct way to deal without something like automapper. I am trying to learn Entity Framework and want to check I am not missing some built in functionality.

Answer 1

Something like:

var dtoEntity = repo.RelatedClient.SingleOrDefault(x => x.LeadCode == ClodeCode);

DTO d = new DTO();
d.ClientName = dtoEntity.ClientName;
foreach (var relatedCode in dtoEntity.RelatedCodes)
{
    d.RelatedCodes.Add(relatedCode);
}

return d;

---

Using this approach you can add as many properties as you’d like. However, I’d suggest using AutoMapper for this.

Read more here:

http://nuget.org/packages/automapper