Question

I’ve created my stored procedure, I’ve created the complex type using the entity model. Now assuming I have successfully established a connection to the database – I’m now ready to run the store procedure and store the rows in a List<ComplexType>. How do I do this in the best, most efficient way? I’m aware that I can iterate through the columns and rows of an SQLDataReader but it sort of feels like I’d be missing the point of the entity framework.

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

You can add the stored procedure as a function import and then call it in your assembly directly:

Using (var context = new NorthwindEntities())
{
               Var query = context.GetEmployeeNames(); // we import the stored procedure as a function GetEmployeeNames().
               //…
}

If you use OUTPUT parameter in your stored procedure, you need to add ObjectParameters to get the return value. For example,

Using(var context = new NorthwindEntities())
{
               ObjectParameter firstname = new ObjectParameter(“firstname”, typeof(String));
               ObjectParameter lastname  = new ObjectParameter(“lastname”, typeof(String));
               Var query = context.GetEmployeeByID(123, firstname, lastname);
               // Console.WriteLine(“Employee {0}’s name is: {1}.{2}.”, 123, firstname, lastname);
}

Here is a live sample:

ReferralVisitors is a Stored Procedure.