Question

Let’s say I have this DBSet

public DbSet<Category> Categories { get; set; }

and that it is used like this in my repository:

public virtual T GetById(long id)
{
    T t = dbset.Find(id);
    return t.Deleted ? null : t;
}

Let’s also say there is a Name property in Category, and that Category is a POCO object.

Is there a way to modify the content of Name between the database and the POCO object? Just for the sake of having an example, let’s say I want to capitalize all letters of Name in my Category POCO object. So, I could have Categories.Name = ‘Books’ in the database (Categories is a table in this case), and then have category.Name = “BOOKS” (where category is a POCO object) after issuing a command like:

Category category = categoryRepository.GetById(id);

Is there any way to achieve this? Is there a kind of a hook in DBSet where a function call can be inserted to transform data being transfered to a POCO object?

(Of course, I would then also need to be able to do the reverse operation when persisting a POCO objet to the database)

Answer 1

Why don’t you just add helper properties. For instance, using a partial class you could do this:

public partial class Categories {
    public string CapitalName {
        return Name.ToUpper();
    }
}

Then you can just do:

Category category = categoryRepository.GetById(id);
string name = category.CaptialName;

Or you could create an extension method on Category.