Why does the entity framework need an ICollection for lazy loading?

Question

I want to write a rich domain class such as

public class Product    
{    
   public IEnumerable Photos {get; private set;}    
   public void A         


        

Answer 1

You can't insert into an IEnumerable. This applies to the EF just as much as it does to your clients. You don't have to use ICollection, though; you can use IList or other writeable types. My advice to get the best of both worlds is to expose DTOs rather than entities to your clients.

Answer 2

I think i found the solution...See here for more details: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/adodotnetentityframework/thread/47296641-0426-49c2-b048-bf890c6d6af2/

Essentially you want to make the ICollection type protected and use this as the backing collection for the public IEnumerable

public class Product
{

   // This is a mapped property
   protected virtual ICollection<Photo> _photos { get; set; }

   // This is an un-mapped property that just wraps _photos
   public IEnumerable<Photo> Photos
   {
      get  { return _photos; }
   }

   public void AddPhoto(){...}
   public void RemovePhoto(){...}

} 

For lazy loading to work the type must implement ICollection and the access must be public or protected.

Answer 3

You can overcome this by using the ReadOnlyCollection(Of T)

public class Product    
{  
    private IList<Photo> _photos;  
    public IList<Photo> Photos {
        get
        {
            return _photos.AsReadOnly();
        }
        private set { _photos = value; }
    }
    public void AddPhoto(){...}    
    public void RemovePhoto(){...}    
}

EDIT: ICollection<T> => IList<T>

Hope that is what you were looking for.