Including Associated Entities through RIA Services

Question

I'm using RIA services SP2 and Entity Framework 5 (Generated from existing DB), however when I pass an entity object with a reference to another entity object, I do not get the referenced object. I am doing the .Include on the entity framework side, and also putting the "Include" attribute over the referenced entity. My classes look similar to this:

[MetadataTypeAttribute(typeof(ProfileValue.ProfileValueMetadata))]
public partial class ProfileValue
{
    internal class ProfileValueMetadata
    {
        private ProfileValueMetadata()
        {
        }

        [Key]
        public int ValueID { get; set; }

        public int ItemID { get; set; }

        [Include]
        [Composition]
        [Association("ProfileValue_ProfileItem", "ItemID", "ItemID")]
        public virtual ProfileItem ProfileItem { get; set; }

        public string Value { get; set; }
    }
}

and:

[MetadataTypeAttribute(typeof(ProfileItem.ProfileItemMetadata))]
public partial class ProfileItem
{

    internal class ProfileItemMetadata
    {
        private ProfileItemMetadata()
        {
        }
        public string Description { get; set; }

        [Key]
        public int ItemID { get; set; }

        [Include]
        public ICollection<ProfileValue> ProfileValues { get; set; }

        public string Type { get; set; }
    }
}

Also, both ProfileItem, and Profile Value have CRUD methods exposing the respective entities to the client. For the time being, I'm just trying to get a query of profile values, to come to the client with their respective ProfileItem's. Calling db.ProfileValues.Include("ProfileItem") and doing ToList on this gives me both entities, it just seems that RIA is failing somewhere to include them.

I've looked at:

POCO entity-based RIA service can't de-serialize associated entities

exposing Associated entities in ria services

and even all the ones referenced here: Include() in EF4 using RIA Services Domain Service not loading!

Current Technologies:

Silverlight 5, Entity Framework 5 (DbContext, not ObjectContext), and Ria Services SP2

All and Any Ideas are welcome!

Edit Here is the RIA Service call:

    [Query(IsDefault = true)]
    public IQueryable<ProfileValue> GetProfileValues()
    {
        return db.ProfileValues.Include("ProfileItem");
    }

I've also tried changing the "ICollection"s to EntitySet and adding/removing the Virtual qualifier. No Dice. — TChadwick
Just to be sure, you have a function in your domain service class that looks something like this, for RIA Services to create the web service function for your client Silverlight application to call, correct? // Public Function GetProfileValuesWithProfileItem() as IQueryable(of ProfileValue) // Return Me.ObjectContext.ProfileValues.Include("ProfileItem") // End Function — sparks

TChadwick TChadwick · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-19T20:33:48

The answer as it turns out, was that I needed to move the metadata class to the same namespace as the class it was providing metadata to. In my case, I had to change from "DataAccess.EntityModels.MetaData" to "DataAccess.EntityModels" where the ProfileValue Entity was residing. This issue threw no errors and provided no information as to why it was failing to serialize the referenced entity. Hours of wasted time... :P

Including Associated Entities through RIA Services

1 Answers