Why does the entity framework need an ICollection for lazy loading?

Question

I think i found the solution...See here for more details: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/adodotnetentityframework/thread/47296641-0426-49c2-b048-bf890c6d6af2/

Essentially you want to make the ICollection type protected and use this as the backing collection for the public IEnumerable

public class Product
{

   // This is a mapped property
   protected virtual ICollection<Photo> _photos { get; set; }

   // This is an un-mapped property that just wraps _photos
   public IEnumerable<Photo> Photos
   {
      get  { return _photos; }
   }

   public void AddPhoto(){...}
   public void RemovePhoto(){...}

} 

For lazy loading to work the type must implement ICollection and the access must be public or protected.

You can't insert into an IEnumerable. This applies to the EF just as much as it does to your clients. You don't have to use ICollection, though; you can use IList or other writeable types. My advice to get the best of both worlds is to expose DTOs rather than entities to your clients.

You can overcome this by using the ReadOnlyCollection(Of T)

public class Product    
{  
    private IList<Photo> _photos;  
    public IList<Photo> Photos {
        get
        {
            return _photos.AsReadOnly();
        }
        private set { _photos = value; }
    }
    public void AddPhoto(){...}    
    public void RemovePhoto(){...}    
}

EDIT: ICollection<T> => IList<T>

Hope that is what you were looking for.