Entity Framework 4.0: .Equals compare to find dups but ignore keys

Question

I'm using Entity Framework 4.0. I want to be able to find duplicate records in an EntitySet. The records will have the same data but different primary keys. When I do a .Equals I get that the records are not equal. I know I can override .Equals but I've got over 20 related entities each with a lot of fields.

Is there a compare method available that will look at all the fields except the key to tell me if they're the same?

Seems like this would be a common issue and I can't imagine it hasn't been solved already.

Thanks for any advice...

Answer 1

Instead of overriding the .Equals() method, you can use its overload to specify your own IEqualityComparer...

Also, if you just want the de-duped or distinct values, you can use the .Distinct() method, or you can do a LINQ group-by query to isolate criteria that has more than one match...

var sample = from a in sampleA join b in sampleB 
on a.SampleProperty equals b.SampleProperty 
into c select c.FirstOrDefault();

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms132151.aspx