Tricks to generate List<double> in entity framework as data from similar set of columns

Question

I am developing an silverlight application using WCF and EF.

I am using Database first as our database already exists.

I have a table that consists of 100 columns with datatype real. We want to generate a class which has a List<double> or List<float> instead of that 100 discrete variables in the class for each column.

Is this possible ?? Can someone give me an example?

Answer 1

There's no direct way. What you have to do is use reflection to convert it into a List<double>. Suppose your table names is called MyObject, then EF will generate a class MyObject to represent a row in that table. You can then do:

Type type = typeof(MyObject);
// Get properties (columns) through reflection 
PropertyInfo[] properties = type.GetProperties(); 
List<List<double>> allRows = new List<List<double>>();

using(var dbContext = MyDB.GetContext())
{
    foreach(var row in dbContext.MyRows)
    {
         List<double> columnValues = new List<double>();
         foreach (PropertyInfo property in properties)
         {
            // The sql type REAL will map to either float or double
            if(property.PropertyType == typeof(float)) 
            {
                 columnValues.Add( (double) property.GetValue(row, null) );
            }
         }
         allRows.Add(columnValues);
    }
}

Hope you get the idea.