Filtering include items in LINQ and Entity Framework [duplicate]

Question

I currently have this LINQ/EF code in my application:

var rootCategoryItem = DatabaseContext.Categories
                            .Include("SubCategories")
                            .OrderBy(c => c.CategoryOrder)
                            .Single(c => c.CategoryId == 1);

I know in EF you can't filter Included items yet, and I can write some LINQ code to filter out the SubCategories that aren't needed... but the LINQ code gets converted to a horrendous SQL which is highly un-optimised. I could also write a stored proc that does this (and write a much better query than LINQ), but I really want to use pure EF.

So I'm left with 2 options (unless someone can see other options).

The first is to loop through the subcategories, remove the ones that aren't needed:

        var subCategoriesToFilter = rootCategoryItem.SubCategories.ToList();

        for (int i = 0; i < subCategoriesToFilter.Count; i++)
        {
            if (subCategoriesToFilter[i].Deleted)
                rootCategoryItem.SubCategories.Remove(subCategoriesToFilter[i]);
        }

The second option would be to have this in my view:

<ul class="treeview ui-accordion-content ui-helper-reset ui-widget-content ui-corner-bottom ui-accordion ui-widget ui-sortable ui-accordion-content-active">
@foreach (var categoryitem in Model.SubCategories.OrderBy(c => c.CategoryOrder))
{

    @if(!Model.Deleted)
    { 
        <li class="treelistitem" id="@Model.CategoryId">
            <div class="ui-accordion-header ui-state-default ui-corner-all ui-accordion-icons ui-sortable-handle first">
            <span class="clickable">
                <span class="ui-accordion-header-icon ui-icon treeviewicon treeviewplus"></span>
                <i class="glyphicon glyphicon-folder-open rightfolderpadding"></i><span class="categoryname">@Model.CategoryName</span>
            </span>
            </div>
           </li>
    }
}   
</ul>

Out of the 2, which one would be the best option? Or is there another option I'm missing?

The Solution

OK, Servy's is pretty much correct, I had to modify his answer to make it work:

        var rootCategoryItem = DatabaseContext.Categories
            .OrderBy(c => c.CategoryId)
            .ToList().Select(c => new Category()
            {
                SubCategories = c.SubCategories.Where(sub => !sub.Deleted).ToList(),    //make sure only undeleted subcategories are returned
                CategoryId = c.CategoryId,
                CategoryName = c.CategoryName,
                Category_ParentID = c.Category_ParentID,
                CategoryOrder = c.CategoryOrder,
                Parent_Category = c.Parent_Category,
                Deleted = c.Deleted
            }).Single(c => c.CategoryId == 1);

I had several errors trying to get Servy's solution to work:

The entity or complex type '.Category' cannot be constructed in a LINQ to Entities query

Cannot implicitly convert type to System.Collections.Generic.ICollection. An explicit conversion exists (are you missing a cast?)

This was all resolved by adding .ToList() before the Select() method.

Answer 1

While you cannot filter a collection included via Include, you can use Select and project that collection into a filtered collection.

var rootCategoryItem = DatabaseContext.Categories
    .OrderBy(c => c.CategoryOrder)
    .Select(c => new Category()
    {
        SubCategories = c.SubCategories.Where(sub => !sub.Deleted)
            .OrderBy(sub => sub.CategoryOrder),
        c.CategoryId,
        c.CategoryName,
        //include any other fields needed here
    })
    .Single(c => c.CategoryId == 1);

Answer 2

I recon this way looks more cleaner and shorter. Not sure about database impact

 var rootCategoryItem = DatabaseContext.Categories.SingleOrDefault();
 if (rootCategoryItem == null) return null;
 {
   rootCategoryItem.Items = rootCategoryItem ?.Items.Where(x => !x.IsDeleted).ToList();
   return rootCategoryItem;
  }