How to include a child object's child object in Entity Framework 5

Solution 1:

If you include the library System.Data.Entity you can use an overload of the Include() method which takes a lambda expression instead of a string. You can then Select() over children with Linq expressions rather than string paths.

return DatabaseContext.Applications
     .Include(a => a.Children.Select(c => c.ChildRelationshipType));

Solution 2:

With EF Core in .NET Core you can use the keyword ThenInclude :

return DatabaseContext.Applications
 .Include(a => a.Children).ThenInclude(c => c.ChildRelationshipType);

Include childs from childrens collection :

return DatabaseContext.Applications
 .Include(a => a.Childrens).ThenInclude(cs => cs.ChildRelationshipType1)
 .Include(a => a.Childrens).ThenInclude(cs => cs.ChildRelationshipType2);

Solution 3:

I ended up doing the following and it works:

return DatabaseContext.Applications
     .Include("Children.ChildRelationshipType");

Solution 4:

A good example of using the Generic Repository pattern and implementing a generic solution for this might look something like this.

public IList<TEntity> Get<TParamater>(IList<Expression<Func<TEntity, TParamater>>> includeProperties)

{

    foreach (var include in includeProperties)
     {

        query = query.Include(include);
     }

        return query.ToList();
}