Filter the “Includes” table on Entity Framework query

Question

This is for Entity Framework for .NET 3.5:

I have the need to query a table and include a collection of the \"many\" table of a one-to-many relationship. I\'m tryin

Answer 1

The forward way:

var q = from a in db.Authors.Include("Books")
        where a.BirthYear > 1900
        select new {
            Author = a,
            FictionBooks = a.Books.Where(b => b.IsFiction)
        };

Another way, derived from the SQL at the bottom of your question:

var q = from a in db.Authors
        from b in db.Books.Include("Author")
        where a.BirthYear > 1900 && b.IsFiction && a.Id == b.Author.Id
        select new { Author = a, Book = b };

The main difference between these two is that the first one will basically give you a collection of authors plus the list of fiction books for each author (which may be empty); while the second will give you a collection of author/books pairs (so it doesn’t return any authors with no fiction books).