Passing an array/table to stored procedure through Entity Framework

Question

I am using Entity Framework with C# to make a Silverlight application. I have written some stored procedures which perform database intensive operations and I need to call them

Answer 1

Is this what you were looking for?

Answer 2

You can't pass table-valued parameters to SQL with the Entity Framework.

What you can do is create a delimited string like "1|2|3|4" and create a Split function in SQL that will return a table.

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.Split
(
    @RowData nvarchar(2000),
@SplitOn nvarchar(5)
)  
RETURNS @RtnValue table 
(
Id int identity(1,1),
Data nvarchar(100)
) 
AS  
BEGIN 
Declare @Cnt int
Set @Cnt = 1

While (Charindex(@SplitOn,@RowData)>0)
Begin
    Insert Into @RtnValue (data)
    Select 
        Data = ltrim(rtrim(Substring(@RowData,1,Charindex(@SplitOn,@RowData)-1)))

    Set @RowData = Substring(@RowData,Charindex(@SplitOn,@RowData)+1,len(@RowData))
    Set @Cnt = @Cnt + 1
End

Insert Into @RtnValue (data)
Select Data = ltrim(rtrim(@RowData))

Return
END

Then if you need to do something like select all items from a table based on what is in the delimited string passed to your proc:

SELECT * FROM SomeTable WHERE Id IN (SELECT Id FROM dbo.Split(@DelStr, '|'))

Answer 3

If you are using SQL Server, which I assume is the case, you can create use a table valued parameter to do what you wish. Using a table valued parameter prevents you from parsing an input parameter within the stored procedure and removes the threat of a SQL injection attack by eliminating the use of dynamic SQL.

Here is a great blog article that covers how to do what you wish to do.

Using Table-Valued Parameters in SQL Server 2008 and C#