Surprisingly, (and happily) it’s not hard to reference all data inside a class using EF’s codefirst in a 1 to 1 type relationship.  Let’s take as an example a very simple relationship where we have a customer who has a detail record.  The model definition for this is as follows:

namespace Con1
{
    public class SiteDB : DbContext
    {
        public DbSet<Detail> Details { get; set; }
        public DbSet<Customer> Customers { get; set; }
    }


    public class Customer
    {
        [Key]
        [DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
        public long Id { get; set; }

        public string Name { get; set; }

    }

    public class Detail
    {
        [Key]
        [DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
        public long Id { get; set; }

        [ForeignKey("CustomerId")]
        public Customer Customer { get; set; }

        public long CustomerId { get; set; }


        public string DetailDescription { get; set; }
    }
}

The idea is that we want to be able to get to a Customer Name by traversing a Detail record in one step.  We need to use the “Include” feature of codefirst to do this.  Below is the code that successfully works:

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Database.SetInitializer(new SiteDBInitializer());

        using (var context = new SiteDB())
        {
            Console.WriteLine(context.Customers.Count());

            var details = context.Details.Include(o => o.Customer);
            foreach (var detail in details)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(
                    String.Format(
                    "DetailId: {0}   CustomerId: {1}   Customer.Name: {2}",
                    detail.Id,detail.CustomerId,detail.Customer.Name));
            }


        }
    }
}

internal class SiteDBInitializer : CreateDatabaseIfNotExists<SiteDB>
{
    protected override void Seed(SiteDB context)
    {

        context.Details.Add(new Detail
            {
                Customer = new Customer {Name = "pkellner"},
                DetailDescription = "descr1"
            });

        context.SaveChanges();   
    }
}

When we run this code we get:

Seems simple but it took me a while before I finally decided to make a simple example to prove to myself that this really works.

HTH’s.

About Peter Kellner

Peter is a software professional specializing in mobile and web technologies. He has also been a Microsoft MVP for the past 7 years. To read more about Peter Kellner and his experience click here. For information about how Peter Kellner might be able to help you with your project click here.

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