Using LINQ with EF Core

We have looked at LINQ queries that filter and sort, but none that change the shape of the items in the sequence. This is called projection because it's about projecting items of one shape into another shape. To learn about projection, it is best to have some more complex types to work with, so in the next project, instead of using string sequences, we will use sequences of entities from the Northwind sample database.

I will give instructions to use SQLite because it is cross-platform but if you prefer to use SQL Server then feel free to do so. I have included some commented code to enable SQL Server if you choose.

Building an EF Core model

We must define an EF Core model to represent the database and tables that we will work with. We will define the model manually to take complete control and to prevent a relationship from being automatically defined between the Categories and Products tables. Later, you will use LINQ to join the...