Breeze expanded properties - how to reference in controller arrays

Question

I am missing a key piece of understanding in my first attempt to pull full entity graphs for an entity with Breeze and EF6 (Hottowel/John Papa flavor)

I have a parent-child-grandchild relationship of Policies-P_Locations-P_Hazards

I want to see the graphs for all policies for one client

In short my query returns the JSON shaped at I expect (confirmed in XHR viewer) and the data.results allow me to drill down (through backingstore - man do we need a viewer on the javascript like C#) to see arrays for children and grandchildren. I see all the policies, locations and hazards I expect for the client (dll version and model/modelmap code at the end of post)

datacontext:

    function getPoliciesByClientsId(clientsid) {

        var policies;

        return EntityQuery.from('Policies')
            .withParameters({ clientsid: clientsid })
            .expand('P_Locations, P_Locations.P_Hazards')
            .using(manager).execute()
            .then(querySucceeded, _queryFailed);

        function querySucceeded(data) {
            policies = data.results;
            log('Retrieved [Policy] from remote data source', policies.length, true);

            return policies;
        }

    }

controller :

function getPoliciesByClientsId(clientsid) {

    return datacontext.getPoliciesByClientsId(clientsid).then(function(data) {
        vm.Policies = [];
        vm.Policies = data;
// at this point vm.Policies shows an object array 
// and I can see p_Locations for each policy and p_Hazards for each location
// but vm.Policies.p_locations is undefined

            return vm.Policies;
        }
    );


}

If I drill into policies in datacontext or vm.Policies in controller I see the camel cased arrays.

BUT

vm.Policies.p_Locations is undefined. And of course I want to reference vm.Policies.p_Locations.p_Hazards as well.

What am I missing in order to reference the graph of data for binding?

BreezeController:

[HttpGet]
public IQueryable<Policy> Policies()
{
    return _repository.Policies;
}

PwiRepository

    public IQueryable<Policy> Policies
    {
        get { return Context.Policies; }
    }

And that creates this request :

Request URL:http://localhost:29130/breeze/Breeze/Policies?$expand=P_Locations%2CP_Locations%2FP_Hazards&clients_id=439

Using manager.metadataStore.getEntityType('P_Location') and then drilling to navigation properties I find these

navigationProperties: Array[4]0: 

dassociationName: "P_Hazard_P_Location"
entityType: l
entityTypeName: "P_Hazard:#Pwi.Model.Models"
foreignKeyNames: Array[0]
foreignKeyNamesOnServer: Array[0]
invForeignKeyNames: Array[1]
invForeignKeyNamesOnServer: Array[1]
inverse: disScalar: falsename: "p_Hazards"
nameOnServer: "P_Hazards"
parentType: lvalidators: Array[0]

associationName: "P_Location_Policy"
entityType: lentityTypeName: "Policy:#Pwi.Model.Models"
foreignKeyNames: Array[1]
foreignKeyNamesOnServer: Array[1]
invForeignKeyNames: Array[0]
invForeignKeyNamesOnServer: Array[0]
inverse: disScalar: truename: "policy"
nameOnServer: "Policy"parentType: l
relatedDataProperties: Array[1]validators: Array[0]__proto__: Objectlength: 4

Here are the dll pieces

<packages>
  <package id="Breeze.Server.ContextProvider" version="1.4.17" targetFramework="net45" />
  <package id="Breeze.Server.ContextProvider.EF6" version="1.4.17" targetFramework="net45" />
  <package id="Breeze.Server.WebApi2" version="1.4.17" targetFramework="net45" />
  <package id="EntityFramework" version="6.1.1" targetFramework="net45" />
  <package id="Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.Client" version="5.2.0" targetFramework="net45" />
  <package id="Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.Core" version="5.2.0" targetFramework="net45" />
  <package id="Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.OData" version="5.2.0" targetFramework="net45" />
  <package id="Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.WebHost" version="5.2.0" targetFramework="net45" />
  <package id="Microsoft.Data.Edm" version="5.6.2" targetFramework="net45" />
  <package id="Microsoft.Data.OData" version="5.6.2" targetFramework="net45" />
  <package id="Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure" version="1.0.0.0" targetFramework="net45" />
  <package id="Newtonsoft.Json" version="6.0.4.0" targetFramework="net45" />
  <package id="System.Spatial" version="5.6.2" targetFramework="net45" />
  <package id="WebActivator" version="1.5.3" targetFramework="net45" />
</packages>

I have a parent-child-grandchild relationship of Policies-P_Locations-P_Hazards Here are the relevant parts of the model and model mapping

P_Location Model :

public partial class P_Location
    {
        public P_Location()   
        {
            this.P_GlCoverages = new List<P_GlCoverage>();
            this.P_Hazards = new List<P_Hazard>();
            this.P_PropertyCoverages = new List<P_PropertyCoverage>();
        }
        public int P_Locations_id { get; set; }
        public int Policies_id { get; set; }
      ......

      public virtual Policy Policy { get; set; }
      public virtual ICollection<P_Hazard> P_Hazards { get; set; }

P_LocationMap

 // Relationships
            this.HasRequired(t => t.Policy)
                .WithMany(t => t.P_Locations)
                .HasForeignKey(d => d.Policies_id);

P_Hazard Model

public Policy Policy { get; set; }
        public P_Location P_Location { get; set; }

P_HazardMap

  // Relationships
            this.HasRequired(t => t.P_Location)
                .WithMany(t => t.P_Hazards)
                .HasForeignKey(d => d.P_Locations_id);

Jay Traband Jay Traband · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-01T17:28:46

First, I'd check to make sure that the objects being returned by your query are in fact entities. i.e. do they each have an 'entityAspect' property? If not, you are returning projections instead of entities. This can happen for a variety of reasons but is usually due to either a namingConvention issue or the lack of a 'toType' call on your EntityQuery. (needed if the query endpoint is not in the entity type/resource name map which is often the case with parameterized queries).

I'd also look in the MetadataStore using getEntityType and making sure that the names of the properties for each of your entities is what you expect.

Can you also post the server side query?

Breeze expanded properties - how to reference in controller arrays

1 Answers