Building an entity join LINQ query - mysql

Question

I have the following table strutucture and am accessing them by using MySQL Entity Framework:
Table Users
- Id
- Name
Table Subscriptions
- Id
- Id_User
- Id_Course
Table Courses
- Id
- Name
What I would like and am having a hard time to do so is building a link query for all users that returns a list with each entry containing:
User Id;
User name;
Concat string separated by comma with all courses for the user or 'no courses' string if none.
This list should be filtered by a part of users name.
I've started to build the code but can't finish it:
var Model db = new Model();
var list = from user in db.Users
join ???
where user.Name.Contains(filter.Trim())
select new { Name = user.Name, Id = user.Id, ???}
Can anyone help me please ?

Answer 1

You should use navigation properties (like User.Subscriptions) for this. Depending on how you created the model they may already be there, else you first should add them.
var query = from u in db.Users
where user.Name.Contains(filter) // trim the filter value first
select new
{
u.Name,
u.Id,
Courses = u.Subscriptions.Select(s => s.Course.Name)
};
var result = query.AsEnumerable()
.Select(q => new
{
q.Name,
q.Id
Courses = string.Join(", ", q.Courses)
};
The reason for doing this in two phases is that string.Join can't directly be used in an EF LINQ expression (can't be turned into SQL) so it must be done in memory (i.e. after an AsEnumerable).
But still it may be efficient to do a projection first (the first part), otherwise too much data may be fetched from the database.