Is there a practical way to use the hierarchyID datatype in entity framework 4?

Question

As it stands now, the CLR UDTs including HierarchyID aren\'t supported in Entity Framework 4. HierarchyID.ToString() is useful, but breaks down once any item has 10+ siblin

Answer 1

Well, I seem to be getting views but no responses. I had some immediate needs to work with the hierarchy structure above SQL, so i put together a static helper class. I don't consider this a complete solution, but so far it works relatively well. PadPath is really the critical function here.

public static class SQLHierarchyManipulatin {
    const int   DEFAULT_PAD_LEN     = 3;
    const char  DEFAULT_PAD_CHAR    = '0';

    public static string PadPath(string Hierarchy) {
        return PadPath (Hierarchy, DEFAULT_PAD_LEN);
    }       
    public static string PadPath(string Hierarchy, int padLen) {
        string[]    components  = Hierarchy.Split('/');

        for (var i = 0; i < components.Length; i++ ) {
            if (components[i] != "") {
                components[i] = components[i].PadLeft(padLen, DEFAULT_PAD_CHAR);
            }
        }
        return string.Join("/", components);
    }

    public static int CurrentNodeIndex(string Hierarchy) {
        string[]    components  = Hierarchy.Split('/');
        string      startItem   = components[components.Length - 2]; //one slot back from trailing slash

        return int.Parse(startItem);
    }

    public static string ParentPath (string Hierarchy) {
        return  Hierarchy.Substring(0, Hierarchy.TrimEnd('/').LastIndexOf('/') + 1);
    }

    public static string AppendChildWithPadding (string Hierarchy, int childIndex, int padLen) {
        return AppendChild(Hierarchy, childIndex, DEFAULT_PAD_LEN);
    }
    public static string AppendChildWithPadding (string Hierarchy, int childIndex) {
        return AppendChild(Hierarchy, childIndex, DEFAULT_PAD_LEN);
    }
    public static string AppendChild (string Hierarchy, int childIndex) {
        return AppendChild(Hierarchy, childIndex, DEFAULT_PAD_LEN);
    }
    public static string AppendChild (string Hierarchy, int childIndex, int padLen) {
        return Hierarchy + childIndex.ToString().PadLeft(padLen, DEFAULT_PAD_CHAR) + "/";
    }
}

Hope this helps someone! Although, I'd still like to hear from people.