Why does Entity Framework return null List<> instead of empty ones?

Question

I\'m pretty new in the ASP .NET MVC world. Maybe, that\'s the reason I can\'t explain to myself the cause of what is, for me, an annoying problem.

I have one class w

Answer 1

Make the otherClasses collection virtual. This will enable EF to lazy load the collection.

class MyClass{
    public virtual List otherClasses {get;set;}
}

Otherwise use eager loading with Include method.

context.myClass.Include(m => m.otherClasses).SingleOrDefault(m => m.Id == foo);