Breeze working with Web API OData

Question

I have a .NET WebAPI 2 Odata service and i am working with Breeze on top of it The OData service is based on the VS2013 ASP.Net VNext version The service supports expand I managed to trick the Microsoft OData metadata serialize to provide the referential constraint with the foreign key like so:

<edmx:Edmx xmlns:edmx="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/06/edmx" Version="1.0">
<edmx:DataServices xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/metadata" m:DataServiceVersion="3.0" m:MaxDataServiceVersion="3.0">
<Schema xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2009/11/edm" Namespace="ODataGame.Models">
<EntityType Name="Incident">
<Key>
<PropertyRef Name="ID"/>
</Key>
<Property Name="ID" Type="Edm.Int32" Nullable="false"/>
<Property Name="Name" Type="Edm.String"/>
<Property Name="Desc" Type="Edm.String"/>
<NavigationProperty Name="DTask" Relationship="ODataGame.Models.ODataGame_Models_DTask_DTaskPartner_ODataGame_Models_Incident_DTask" ToRole="DTask" FromRole="Incident"/>
</EntityType>
<EntityType Name="DTask">
<Key>
<PropertyRef Name="ID"/>
</Key>
<Property Name="ID" Type="Edm.Int32" Nullable="false"/>
<Property Name="Name" Type="Edm.String"/>
<Property Name="IncidentID" Type="Edm.Int32" Nullable="false"/>
<NavigationProperty Name="Incident" Relationship="ODataGame.Models.ODataGame_Models_DTask_DTaskPartner_ODataGame_Models_Incident_DTask" ToRole="Incident" FromRole="DTask"/>
</EntityType>
<Association Name="ODataGame_Models_DTask_DTaskPartner_ODataGame_Models_Incident_DTask">
<End Type="ODataGame.Models.Incident" Role="Incident" Multiplicity="0..1"/>
<End Type="ODataGame.Models.DTask" Role="DTask" Multiplicity="*"/>
<ReferentialConstraint>
<Principal Role="Incident">
<PropertyRef Name="ID"/>
</Principal>
<Dependent Role="DTask">
<PropertyRef Name="IncidentID"/>
</Dependent>
</ReferentialConstraint>
</Association>
<Association Name="ODataGame_Models_DTask_Incident_ODataGame_Models_Incident_IncidentPartner">
<End Type="ODataGame.Models.Incident" Role="Incident" Multiplicity="0..1"/>
<End Type="ODataGame.Models.DTask" Role="DTask" Multiplicity="0..1"/>
</Association>
<EntityContainer Name="Container" m:IsDefaultEntityContainer="true">
<EntitySet Name="Incident" EntityType="ODataGame.Models.Incident"/>
<EntitySet Name="DTask" EntityType="ODataGame.Models.DTask"/>
<AssociationSet Name="ODataGame_Models_DTask_DTaskPartner_ODataGame_Models_Incident_DTaskSet" Association="ODataGame.Models.ODataGame_Models_DTask_DTaskPartner_ODataGame_Models_Incident_DTask">
<End Role="Incident" EntitySet="Incident"/>
<End Role="DTask" EntitySet="DTask"/>
</AssociationSet>
<AssociationSet Name="ODataGame_Models_DTask_DTaskPartner_ODataGame_Models_Incident_DTaskSet" Association="ODataGame.Models.ODataGame_Models_DTask_DTaskPartner_ODataGame_Models_Incident_DTask">
<End Role="DTask" EntitySet="DTask"/>
<End Role="Incident" EntitySet="Incident"/>
</AssociationSet>
</EntityContainer>
</Schema>
</edmx:DataServices>
</edmx:Edmx>

The problem is that the web API odata returns expand result within an extra result element and not directly as a jason array like so:

     "__metadata":{
              "id":"http://localhost:27698/odata/Incident(3)","uri":"http://localhost:27698/odata/Incident(3)","type":"ODataGame.Models.Incident"
            },"DTask":{
              "results":[
                {
                  "__metadata":{
                    "id":"http://localhost:27698/odata/DTask(1)","uri":"http://localhost:27698/odata/DTask(1)","type":"ODataGame.Models.DTask"
                  },"Incident":{
                    "__deferred":{
                      "uri":"http://localhost:27698/odata/DTask(MEIR%20MISSING)/Incident"
                    }
                  },"ID":1,"Name":"kk","IncidentID":3
                }
              ]
            },"ID":3,"Name":"asas","Desc":"zz"
          }

is there a way to configure breeze to handle that correctly?

If i have a navigation property only within one element without a reverse property on the other side, for example in my case an incident holding a collection of task but a task not needing to have a reference to the incident, Breeze does not seems to support that correctly, is there a way to configure that?

Did you solve that issue regarding the extra result element not handled by breeze ? I'm having the same problem here : stackoverflow.com/questions/19060244/… — Sam
Could you share how you tricked the OData EDM serializer to include the ReferentialConstraint? I'm having trouble getting breeze to recognize a 1-to-m association because of the missing constraint. — khaledh

Ward Ward · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-22T00:23:33

I am not that familiar with the Breeze OData adapter and you are talking about unstable, unreleased technologies here when you refer to the "ASP.Net VNext version". You are working on the bleeding edge.

If you like it there, you are welcome to dive into the Breeze OData "dataserviceAdapter" (not documented but in GitHub) and the "jsonResultsAdapter". With the latter you should be able to bend whatever the server sends you into something useful on the client (if you can't, I want to know about it).

Breeze working with Web API OData

2 Answers