Can Entity Framework Auto-Update Property Navigation By Id

Question

In Entity Framework, when I've mapped my tables to the corresponding entities through the designer and get to actually using them, I'll find that an entity - Thing, who has a relationship (many to one, or one to one) with another object, say, Bob, for example, would produce the following three properties on Thing:

Bob
BobId
BobReference

And were I to set BobId, and save my entity, the next time I fetch this Thing, I'll be able to navigate the Bob property without trouble. I'm curious, however, if it is possible to configure EF to allow me to navigate the property without having to immediately save.

Answer 1

You can do something like this: (EF 4.1)

//Has to exists a record on Bob table with Id = 1
var thing = new Thing() { BobId = 1 };

var context = new YouContext();
context.Entry(thing ).State = EntityState.Unchanged;
context.Entry(thing ).Reference(x => x.Bob).Load();

and then thing.Bob is != null