Include only one property, not entire database row

Question

Model:

public class Word
{
    public int ID { get; set; }
    public string Title { get; set; }
    public DateTime? WhenCreated { get; set; }
    public ApplicationUser Author { get; set; }

    [NotMapped]
    public string AuthorName
    {
        get
        {
            if (Author != null)
            {
                return Author.UserName;
            }
            else {
                return "";
            }
        }
    }

    public List<Definition> Definitions { get; set; }
}

Controller:

[HttpGet]
    public IEnumerable<Word> Get()
    {
        return _db.Words.Include(x=>x.Author).ToList();
    }

My Controller now returns entire ApplicationUser class which is one of properties of Word. I want to send only one property of ApplicationUser: UserName. How can I do that?

I've added AuthorName, which would return only data that I want from ApplicationUser. Unfortunately I still have to .Include(x=>x.Author) to make this property work. Can I somehow omit including Author in process of data serialization (to hide it when sending data to user)?

I know I can use .Select() method, but it requires me to type all properties I will need. If I modify my Model in the future, I will need to update all those .Select() which will would be inconvenient and waste of time.

How would you solve that?

Answer 1

You need to create a Dto object and assign the values to it and return the Dto instead.

Dto

public class WordDto 
{
    public string Title { get; set; }
    public DateTime? WhenCreated { get; set; }
    public string AuthorName { get; set; }
}

Then in your action

[HttpGet]
public async Task<IEnumerable<WordDto>> Get()
{
    return _db.Words
              .Include(x=>x.Author)
              .Select(x =>
                  new WordDto 
                  {
                      Title = x.Title,
                      DateTime = x.WhenCreated,
                      AuthorName = x.Author?.UserName ?? string.Empty
                  }
              )
              .ToListAsync();
}

Answer 2

You can try it as shown below.

Note : You don't need to use Include here.

    [HttpGet]
    public async Task<IEnumerable<Word>> Get()
    {
        return _db.Words.Select(x => new  
                      {
                          Word = x,
                          AuthorName = x.Author.UserName
                      }
                  ).ToList();
    }