Question

Oftentimes I need to return a list of two or three columns from a stored proc in the data layer. I usually use entities to push data back to the business/UI layer. However, I don’t want to create an entity for something that is not really an entity.

Lets say I have to return a set of “date, string, string”, is there any other way to do this.. for two columns, i can perhaps get away with a dictionary. I always end up creating a dummy entity but thought I’ll ask this time.

Answer 1

Create a new model to store the data:

public class ResultModel
{
    public DateTime DateTime1 { get; set; }
    public string String1 { get; set; }
    public string String1 { get; set; }
}

then just store your data into this like so:

IEnumerable<ResultModel> results =
    Entities.Table.Select(r => new ResultModel
    {
        DateTime1 = r.DateTime,
        String1 = r.String1,
        String2 = r.String2
    });

Not verified the code but is a guide as to how to achieve this.