Populate JOIN into a list in one database query
- by axio
I am trying to get the records from the 'many' table of a one-to-many relationship and add them as a list to the relevant record from the 'one' table.
I am also trying to do this in a single database request.
Code derived from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1580199/linq-to-sql-populate-join-result-into-a-list almost achieves the intended result, but makes one database request per entry in the 'one' table which is unacceptable. That failing code is here:
var res = from variable in _dc.GetTable<VARIABLE>()
select new { x = variable, y = variable.VARIABLE_VALUEs };
However if I do a similar query but loop through all the results, then only a single database request is made. This code achieves all goals:
var res = from variable in _dc.GetTable<VARIABLE>()
select variable;
List<GDO.Variable> output = new List<GDO.Variable>();
foreach (var v2 in res)
{
List<GDO.VariableValue> values = new List<GDO.VariableValue>();
foreach (var vv in v2.VARIABLE_VALUEs)
{
values.Add(VariableValue.EntityToGDO(vv));
}
output.Add(EntityToGDO(v2));
output[output.Count - 1].VariableValues = values;
}
However the latter code is ugly as hell, and it really feels like something that should be do-able in a single linq query.
So, how can this be done in a single linq query that makes only a single database query?
In both cases the table is set to preload using the following code:
_dc = _db.CreateLinqDataContext();
var loadOptions = new DataLoadOptions();
loadOptions.LoadWith<VARIABLE>(v => v.VARIABLE_VALUEs);
_dc.LoadOptions = loadOptions;
I am using .NET 3.5, and the database back-end was generated using SqlMetal.
