Entity Framework, Let's add some power to it

 

Wow Entity Framework is starting to pack Power

So, what do I mean by that. It was released 15 years ago on the 11 of August 2008. Back then it was part of the .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1  and you could use it with Visual Studio 2008 as long as you had service pack 1. To be honest, back then it wasn't very good. It was slow and a little painful. Jump forward 15 years...

Jump forward 16 years and we now have Entity Framework Core 9. You can add it to you use it .Net 9 as a set of Nuget packages.  This short blog post isn't going to teach you how to use EF Core 9, or .Net 9 it is simply going to show you how to ramp up your retrieval of data.

So, why is EF 9 Core so powerful?

Say we have a service Method called CreateBankCustomer that accept a complex object that includes BankCustomer and a list of BankBankAccounts? You can create all the table entries in one fail swoop....

using (var context = new BankingContext())
{
    var customer = new BankCustomer
    {
        BankId = 1,
FirstName = "Andy",
LastName = "Tate",
        BankBankAccounts = new List<BankBankAccount>
        {
            new BankBankAccounts { AccountType = "Checking", RoutingCode="123453585", AccountNumber="73287873287287", OpeningBalance=100.00 },
            new BankBankAccounts {  AccountType = "Savings", RoutingCode="123453585", AccountNumber="73285345435545", OpeningBalance=50.00 },
        }
    };

    context.BankCustomers.Add(customer);
    context.SaveChanges();
}

In this example I am hard coding the children but if you were passed customer and it had the child entities then you would simply need to do

public int AddBankCustomer(BankCustomer customer) {
    using (var context = new BankingContext())
    {
        context.BankCustomers.Add(customer);
        context.SaveChanges();
    }
    return customer.Id;
}

Now, that is a bit easier than calling Create on a BankCustomer then Create on BankBankAccount twice.

How about getting the data?

using (var context = new BankingContext())
 {
    var customer =  _db.BankCustomer.Include(customer => customer.BankBankAccounts).FirstOrDefault(u => u.Id == id);
}

Now the best thing that they have added... What if I only want the customer and their savings account...

var customer =  _bankDbContext.BankCustomers.Include(customer => customer.BankBankAccounts.Where(bc => bc.AccountType == "Savings")).FirstOrDefault(u => u.Id == id);

So, now you see the power of Entity Framework. 

One final thing... on updating data with EF 9 Core, it is smart enough to see what has changed and only ask the database to update that column(s).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When Greed and Deception Destroy a Company

Image
  Have you ever worked for a company where you thought it was too true to be true? Did they give you free snacks, great coffee, lunch every now and then, send employees on trips? All under the disguise of caring. Then you see the signs that it is actually more about making money. They are unhappy when you would rather take a day off then charge the client for a day when you do no work. They complain if you work in the evening because the code you needed to test wasn't available until then. They get you to secretly test the client's site just because their developers didn't like having to use the client's components. They add more people to the project because they have hours left to use up. All while pushing the harder work down the road.  My question is when did companies become so unethical? They promise the world to their clients then deliver things that are just good enough. I am a very ethical person. I always have been. I believe in doing the work necessary to get...
Read more

Let's Geocode with Here.com

Image
 Welcome to the World of Geocodes Have you ever wanted to see if an address is real and if it is get the geocode for it? Geocode, what is that? Ok, let's start with defining what a geocode is and what it can be used for. The location of everything on Earth can be defined as a set of latitude and longitude (a sort of set of coordinates). So, a geocode is simply this set of latitude and longitude that represents a geographic entity. Now that we know this, what is it used for. Simple, if you want to store a location on a Google map, it is easiest to store the geocode for it. If you have the geocode you can use it to add a marker to the map or even center the map. Another use is when you have several geocodes, you can build a fence on a map and then check the fence to see if a point is within the boundary of the fence, but that is for another post on another day, today we simply want to get the geocode for an address.  In this post I am going to take you through an example of how ...
Read more

I am Me, no excuses, just Me

Image
It all started many years ago when at the age of 10 a neighbor gave me a book on computer programming. I read it and was hooked. I asked him how I could do it and he gave me a stack of punch cards and a punch and told me to go at it, so I did. Back then there were no personal computers, so I had to send my program to IBM to run it. They did and 2 weeks later I got the results, syntax error on card 28. That was when I learnt my first lesson, check your code!!! I was hooked. That was over 40 years ago. I never planned to make computer programming my job, it was my hobby. This was the 70s, I was a warden at a sports complex, ran a mobile disco and played field hockey. All the time I carried on learning to program. By the early 80s small personal computers came out and I got a Sinclair Spectrum. It saved programs and executables to cassette tape and I had 8K of memory. I wrote text-based adventure games which I shared with my friends. This was all good until one of my friend's sister ...
Read more