I'm modelling a Game object (here I removed a few properties to keep it simple) with a foreign key PlayerModeId referencing a Mode table and PlayerMode as a navigation property.

When I use EF Core to retrieve all games with this statement:

context.Game.Include(x => x.PlayerMode)

it produces a JSON shown here - is there a way to remove redundancy of including PlayerModeId twice? Or maybe project just a single PlayerMode: "Single" key instead of two keys?

{
    ...
    "PlayerModeId": 1,
    "PlayerMode": {
       "Id": 1,
       "PlayerMode": "Single"
    }
}

Game and Mode classes:

public class Game
{
    [Key]
    public string Id { get; set; } = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();

    public required string Name { get; set; }

    public int PlayerModeId { get; set; }
    public Mode? PlayerMode { get; set; }
}

public class Mode
{
    [Key]
    public int Id { get; set;}
    public required string PlayerMode { get; set; }
}

I'm modelling a Game object (here I removed a few properties to keep it simple) with a foreign key PlayerModeId referencing a Mode table and PlayerMode as a navigation property.

When I use EF Core to retrieve all games with this statement:

context.Game.Include(x => x.PlayerMode)

it produces a JSON shown here - is there a way to remove redundancy of including PlayerModeId twice? Or maybe project just a single PlayerMode: "Single" key instead of two keys?

{
    ...
    "PlayerModeId": 1,
    "PlayerMode": {
       "Id": 1,
       "PlayerMode": "Single"
    }
}

Game and Mode classes:

public class Game
{
    [Key]
    public string Id { get; set; } = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();

    public required string Name { get; set; }

    public int PlayerModeId { get; set; }
    public Mode? PlayerMode { get; set; }
}

public class Mode
{
    [Key]
    public int Id { get; set;}
    public required string PlayerMode { get; set; }
}

• entity-framework-core

• 2 Yes, the usual recommendation: don't expose entity objects, project to DTOs to display data. (Not my downvote, btw) – Gert Arnold Commented yesterday

1 Answer 1

It's not advisable to expose your entity models directly. Instead, you should project only the necessary fields using a Select. Doing this, along with a proper JSON structure, ensures your SQL queries are efficient and return just the required data.

context.Game.Select(g => new
{
    // Include only the properties you need
    PlayerMode = g.PlayerMode.PlayerMode
});