asp.net MVC fetching data with table relations

Question

Hello,

I have created my Database which has: Artist, tracks and TracksPerArtists

I can do sql queries through the entity model. For example when I make:

database.TRACK.ToList()

I get the list of track to be shown on index view for example. But my foreign keys come empty. While there is an artist and a track, and the correct row for ArtistsPerTrack, this item in my track.ToList() collection is empty.

Is there a different way to fetch those data?

I came from cakePHP framework in which you can define the Model.recursive property to declare the depth of the relations you want to fetch.

Is there anything similar here?

Answer 1

There is something similar. If "database" is DataContext and Artist and Tracks have many to many relationship in database, you can fetch related entities using Include clause:

database.TRACK.Include("Artists").ToList()

where "Artists" is the name of property on Track entity.