How do I delete multiple rows in Entity Framework (without foreach)

Question

I'm deleting several items from a table using Entity Framework. There isn't a foreign key / parent object so I can't handle this with OnDeleteCascade.

Right now I'm doing this:

var widgets = context.Widgets
    .Where(w => w.WidgetId == widgetId);

foreach (Widget widget in widgets)
{
    context.Widgets.DeleteObject(widget);
}
context.SaveChanges();

It works but the foreach bugs me. I'm using EF4 but I don't want to execute SQL. I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything - this is as good as it gets, right? I can abstract it with an extension method or helper, but somewhere we're still going to be doing a foreach, right?

Answer 1

Well, yes, except you can make it into a two-liner:

context.Widgets.Where(w => w.WidgetId == widgetId).ToList().ForEach(context.DeleteObject); context.SaveChanges();

Answer 2

Jon,

If you don't want to execute SQL directly calling DeleteObject in a loop is the best you can do today.

However you can execute SQL and still make it completely general purpose via an extension method, using the approach I describe here.

Although that answer was for 3.5. For 4.0 I would probably use the new ExecuteStoreCommand API under the hood, instead of dropping down to the StoreConnection.

Hope this helps

Alex