LINQ to Entities

One of the most important concepts to understand LINQ to Entities is that it’s a
declarative language. The focus is on defining what information you need, rather than
on how to obtain the information.
• It means that you can spend more time working with data and less time
trying to figure out the underlying code required to perform tasks such as
accessing the database.
• It’s important to understand that declarative languages don’t actually
remove any control from the developer, but it helps the developer focus
attention on what’s important.

LINQ to Entities Essential Keywords

It’s important to know the basic keywords used to create a LINQ query. There are only a
few keywords to remember, but you can combine them in various ways to obtain specific
results. The following list contains these basic keywords and provides a simple
description of each one.

Sr. No. Keyword & Description

1
Ascending
Specifies that a sorting operation takes place from the least (or lowest) element of a
range to the highest element of a range. This is normally the default setting. For
example, when performing an alphabetic sort, the sort would be in the range from A
to Z.

2
By
Specifies the field or expression used to implement a grouping. The field or expression
defines a key used to perform the grouping task.

3
Descending
 Specifies that a sorting operation takes place from the greatest (or highest) element
of a range to the lowest element of a range. For example, when performing an
alphabetic sort, the sort would be in the range from Z to A.

4
Equals
Used between the left and right clauses of a join statement to join the primary
contextual data source to the secondary contextual data source. The field or
expression on the left of the equals keyword specifies the primary data source, while
the field or expression on the right of the equals keyword specifies the secondary data
source.

5
From
Specifies the data source used to obtain the required information and defines a range
variable. This variable has the same purpose as a variable used for iteration in a loop.

6
Group
Organizes the output into groups using the key value you specify. Use multiple group
clauses to create multiple levels of output organization. The order of the group
clauses determines the depth at which a particular key value appears in the grouping
order. You combine this keyword with by to create a specific context.

7
In
Used in a number of ways. In this case, the keyword determines the contextual
database source used for a query. When working with a join, the in keyword is used
for each contextual database source used for the join.

8
Into
Specifies an identifier that you can use as a reference for LINQ query clauses such as
join, group, and select.

9
Join
 Creates a single data source from two related data sources, such as in a master/detail
setup. A join can specify an inner, group, or left-outer join, with the inner join as the
default. You can read more about joins at msdn.microsoft.com

10
Let
Defines a range variable that you can use to store subexpression results in a query
expression. Typically, the range variable is used to provide an additional enumerated
output or to increase the efficiency of a query (so that a particular task, such as finding
the lowercase value of a string, need not be done more than one time).

11
On
Specifies the field or expression used to implement a join. The field or expression
defines an element that is common to both contextual data sources.

12
Orderby
Creates a sort order for the query. You can add the ascending or descending keyword
to control the order of the sort. Use multiple orderby clauses to create multiple levels
of sorting. The order of the orderby clauses determines the order in which the sort
expressions are handled, so using a different order will result in different output.

13
Where
Defines what LINQ should retrieve from the data source. You use one or more Boolean
expressions to define the specifics of what to retrieve. The Boolean expressions are
separated from each other using the && (AND) and || (OR) operators.

14
Select
Determines the output from the LINQ query by specifying what information to return.
This statement defines the data type of the elements that LINQ returns during the
iteration process.

Projection
Projection queries improve the efficiency of your application, by only retrieving specific
fields from your database.
 • Once you have the data, you may want to project or filter it as needed to
shape the data prior to output.
• The main task of any LINQ to Entities expression is to obtain data and
provide it as output.
The “Developing LINQ to Entities queries” section of this chapter demonstrates the
techniques for performing this basic task.
Let’s take a look at the following code in which list of students will be retrieved.

using (var context = new UniContextEntities()) {

var studentList = from s in context.Students select s;

foreach (var student in studentList) {

string name = student.FirstMidName + " " + student.LastName;
Console.WriteLine("ID : {0}, Name: {1}", student.ID, name);
}
}

Single Object
To retrieve a single student object you can use First() or FirstOrDefault enumerable
methods which returns the first element of a sequence. The difference between First
and FirstOrDefault is that First() will throw an exception, if there is no result data for the
supplied criteria whereas FirstOrDefault() returns default value null, if there is no result
data. In the below code snippet first student from the list will be retrieved whose first
name is Ali.

using (var context = new UniContextEntities()) {

var student = (from s in context.Students where s.FirstMidName

== "Ali" select s).FirstOrDefault<Student>();

string name = student.FirstMidName + " " + student.LastName;

Console.WriteLine("ID : {0}, Name: {1}", student.ID, name);
}

You can also use Single() or SingleOrDefault to get a single student object which returns
a single, specific element of a sequence. In the following example, a single student is
retrieved whose ID is 2.

using (var context = new UniContextEntities()) {

var student = (from s in context.Students where s.ID

 == 2 select s).SingleOrDefault<Student>();
string name = student.FirstMidName + " " + student.LastName;

Console.WriteLine("ID : {0}, Name: {1}", student.ID, name);

Console.ReadKey();
}

List of Objects
If you want to retrieve the list of students whose first name is Ali then you can use
ToList() enumerable method.

using (var context = new UniContextEntities()) {

var studentList = (from s in context.Students where s.FirstMidName

== "Ali" select s).ToList();

foreach (var student in studentList) {

string name = student.FirstMidName + " " + student.LastName;
Console.WriteLine("ID : {0}, Name: {1}", student.ID, name);
}

Console.ReadKey();
}

Order
To retrieve data/list in any particular order you can used orderby keyword. In the
following code, snippet list of student will be retrieved in ascending order.

using (var context = new UniContextEntities()) {

var studentList = (from s in context.Students orderby

s.FirstMidName ascending select s).ToList();

foreach (var student in studentList) {

string name = student.FirstMidName + " " + student.LastName;
Console.WriteLine("ID : {0}, Name: {1}", student.ID, name);
}

Console.ReadKey();
}

Standard Vs Projection Entity Framework Query

Let’s suppose, you have a Student model that contains the ID, FirstMidName, LastName
and EnrollmentDate. If you want to return a list of Students, a standard query would
return all the fields. But if you only want to get a list of students that contain ID,
FirstMidName, and LastName fields. This is where you should use a projection query.
Following is the simple example of projection query.

using (var context = new UniContextEntities()) {

var studentList = from s in context.Students

orderby s.FirstMidName ascending
where s.FirstMidName == "Ali"

select new {s.ID, s.FirstMidName, s.LastName};

foreach (var student in studentList) {

string name = student.FirstMidName + " " + student.LastName;
Console.WriteLine("ID : {0}, Name: {1}", student.ID, name);
}

Console.ReadKey();
}

The projection query above excludes the EnrollmentDate field. This will make your
application much quicker.