Lazy Loading Items in Entity Framework

Question

I have two objects that have a many to many relationship with each other.

I'm using Entity Framework in a Database First approach.

My Database Profiler is showing that everytime I fetch one set of objects A, it loads the other set of object B for each element in A. I assumed that with lazy loading, this wouldn't happen, or that B would be fetched when accessing via the navigation property.

The code to access the objects uses a generic approach, where entities is my DbContext

public virtual IQueryable<T> GetAll()
{
    IQueryable<T> query = entities.Set<T>();
    return query;
}

Both navigation properties are implemented as virtual ICollection<T> and I have Configuration.LazyLoadingEnabled = true explicitly set in my DbContext constructor.

Am I missing something, or approaching this the wrong way? Should I just remove the navigation properties and explicitly load what I need via other queries?

Are you watching the loaded A elements in the debugger? Remember that you trigger lazy loading with the debugger when you watch the A elements with their B collections. — Slauma
I set LazyLoadingEnabled to false and then the B collections aren't loaded, so I'm not sure why that is — Andrew Burgess
It simply means that something in your code touches those navigation properties and executes lazy loading - as @Slauma mentioned even debugging tools are doing this. — Ladislav Mrnka
Does calling ToList() on the IQueryable cause the lazy loading to be executed? Without using the debugger, and just using the SQL Server Profiler, I can see that each A object is having the B objects selected, and I don't actually use the navigation property anywhere — Andrew Burgess
But this sounds more like eager loading. Are you using Include in your query? — Slauma

JTMon JTMon · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-18T18:51:42

In the presence of the experts I am reluctant to ask this :) but would setting ProxyCreationEnabled=false on the DbContext not help in this case? Sorry if this is too "newbish" of a point

Lazy Loading Items in Entity Framework

1 Answers