Entity Framework nesting variables

Question

I have the following setup in Entity:

public class t_HT
{
    public int UNID { get; set; }

    public string Name { get; set; }

    public ICollection<t_HTC> Comments { get; set; }

}

AND

public class t_HTC
{
    public int UNID { get; set; }

    public int HTID { get; set; }

    [ForeignKey("HTID")]
    public t_HT HT { get; set; }

    public int CId { get; set; }

    [ForeignKey("CId")]
    public t_C C { get; set; }
}

AND

public class t_C
{
    public int UNID { get; set; }

    public string Name { get; set; }

    public ICollection<t_HTC> Comments { get; set; }
}

Where the relationships are as follows:

Many t_HTC to one t_HT

One t_HT to many t_HTC

AND

Many t_HTC to one t_C

One t_C to many t_HTC

This setup works fine and achieves what I need.

However, when querying using C# and Linq/Entity I can do the following:

var queryHt = context.ht.include(x => x.htc);

AND

var queryC = context.c.include(x => x.htc);

Either of these will return a single t_ht with a nested list of t_htc OR a single t_c with a nested list of t_htc

However, what I want to achieve is:

a single t_ht, with a nested list of t_htc, and then for t_htc to include the corresponding entry in t_c

I know I can achieve this by performing a join that joins queryC into queryHt but this seems a bit of a long way to go about doing this.

Surely entity can achieve what I am trying to do?

Please note variable names have been adjusted for the purpose of this question, and are not like this in my actual code.

Answer 1

You can achieve what you want with this:

var queryHt = context.ht.Include("htc.C");

or with the strong typed version:

var queryHt = context.ht.Include(x => x.htc.Select(y => y.C));

The strong typed version requires adding using System.Data.Entity;.