Selective eager loading in Entity Framework

Question

Is it possible to limit the number of associated entities eagerly loaded with Include?

e.g. I have Author and Book entities with a many-to-one relation I'd like to load all authors and their last book

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can't do it using the .Include syntax but you can do it using projection.

var list = (from a in data.Authors 
           select new 
           { 
              Author = a, 
              Books = (from b in a.Books select b).Take(1)
           }).ToList();

When you get the result the materializer will have used it's relationship fixup and you will be able to use list.Author.Books.

see my question at: LINQ to Entities (Entity Framework) Join and .Include conflict