Setting Entity Framework Fields

Question

I generated a Members table and a MembersType table which has a primary key which links to the Type foreign key in the Members table. The MembersType table is literally just 3 records, so that each Member can be of MemberType 1, 2 or 3.

Now the problem is that when Entity Framework generates the data layer and objects for the Members object, it creates a MemberType object in the Members object, but all I want to be able to do when setting it is:

 Members.MemberType = 1;

but because of the above, I have to do this:

 MemberTypes = db.MemberTypes.Where(x => x.MemberTypeId == 1).AsQueryable().First()

Is there anyway to stop it from generating an object on foreign keys so I can just set it as an int? Surely this is more quicker and resource efficient than querying the type table everytime too.

Answer 1

You have encountered one of everyone's least favorite features of EFv1. The problem is that everything is an Entity, so you can't get to foreign key values as primitives.

Your code sample shows how it has to be done in EFv1. The best you can do is cache those enum values up front so you don't have to keep getting them from the context. EFv4 does away with this restriction with "FK Properties," which is just a fancy way of saying raw foreign keys you can set directly.