Embed Foreign Key Objects in JSON Response in .NET

Question

I would like to embed foreign key objects into my .NET JSON responses in my API. I come from a Rails background and formatting the JSON response to include any found foreign key records is fairly simple. However, I can't seem to find the way to do this. I have a foreign key relationship set up like the below models:

public class Person
{
[Key]
public int id {get; set;}
public string name {get; set;}
}

public class House
{
[Key]
public int id {get; set;}
public string address {get; set;}
[Required]
public int personId {get; set;}
[ForeignKey("peronsId")]
public Person person {get; set;}
}

However, when I run a GET request, I get the house in the form:

{
"id":1,
"address":"Middle of Nowhere",
"personId":3
}

When what I want is:

{
"id":1,
"address":"Middle of Nowhere",
"person":{
"id":3,
"name":"Some Dude"
}
}

Or some similar structure. How can I accomplish this in .NET?

Using .NET 4.5 Web API 2 with Entity Framework in C#.

ocuenca · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-23 21:27:16Z

2

Try making the navigation property virtual:

public class House
{
  //...
  [ForeignKey("peronsId")]
  public virtual Person person {get; set;}
}

If you have not disabled the lazy loading behavior,EF automatically loads a related entity when the navigation property for that entity is dereferenced.

Another option is eager load the navigation property using the Include extension method:

datacontext.Houses.Include(h=>h.person);

I suggest you check this link for more info about this topic

answered Feb 23, 2015 at 21:27

ocuenca

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