Include property on ASP.Net Identity 2.0 UserManager.Users.ToListAsync and UserManager.FindByIdAsync

Question

I am trying to implement Asp.Net Identity 2.0. I have managed so far very well with the help of this blog. But I went a slightly different road. I want some data not to be part of the User object, but rather of a newly created Customer object. I want to keep the authentication and authorization data separate from my business data.

So in my case I modified the ApplicationUser class by adding a customer property:

    public Customer Customer { get; set; }

The Customer class looks like this:

public class Customer
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string FirstName { get; set; }
    public string LastName { get; set; }
    public string Insertion { get; set; }
    public Gender Gender { get; set; }
    public DateTime Birthdate { get; set; }
    ...etc.
    public virtual ApplicationUser User { get; set; }
}

I also added the relationship in de the ApplicationDbContext:

    protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder)
    {
        modelBuilder.Entity<Customer>()
            .HasRequired(u => u.User);
        base.OnModelCreating(modelBuilder);

    }

So now after some modifications to the register viewmodel and the controller I am able to register as a user and have both a User record created in the AspNetUsers table and a Customer record in the Customer table with a reference to the User record. So far so good.

But now when I retrieve the user for example for display purposes the Customer property is empty. Which makes sense, since the underlying record is not loaded. Normally I would use the .Include keyword to load the related records. But I don't know how to do that when using the default UserManager that comes with Asp.Net identity 2.0.

Does anybody know how to achieve this?

Answer 1

I found the answer. Probablu need more searching before answering. The answer is based on the answer in this SO Question

I have added a class called ApplicationUserStore.

public class ApplicationUserStore : UserStore<ApplicationUser>
{
    public ApplicationUserStore(DbContext context)
        : base(context)
    {
    }

    public override System.Threading.Tasks.Task<ApplicationUser> FindByIdAsync(string userId)
    {

        return Users.Include(u=>u.Customer).Include(u => u.Roles).Include(u => u.Claims).Include(u => u.Logins).FirstOrDefaultAsync(u => u.Id == userId);
    }
}

In this class I have overriden the FindByIdAsync to include the customer record.

Then I changed in IdentityConfig.cs the first line in the method Create which returns the ApplicationUserManager so that it passes the newly created ApplicationUserStore instead of the UserStore.

var manager = new ApplicationUserManager(new ApplicationUserStore(context.Get<ApplicationDbContext>()));

I probably also have to override some other fetching methods to include the customer records.