load partial entityset ef4

Question

Can I load only a few properties from an Entity?

As an example I have an entity with the following properties:

ID
DESCRIPTION
HEADER
PICTURE

I only want to load the IDs and not the other properties.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

In your case if you just need the IDs, you can use the following query:

var ids = context.YourEntities.Select(e => e.ID).ToList();

You can also use projection (useful if you need to load more than one property):

var entitiesWithIdsAndHeaders = context.
                                YourEntities.
                                Select(e => new
                                            {
                                                Id = e.ID,
                                                Description = e.Description
                                            }).
                                ToList();