如何创建一个从实体对象继承的类？？？ （实体框架）

Question

I have a Silverlight Bussiness Application, I'm using Entity Framework Data model, and I have an entity class called Clients, with some properties: Name, LastName, Address, etc. I need to create a class that inherits from Clients class, I need something like this...

public class ClientWithSubClients : Clients
{
    public bool HasSubClients { get; set; }
    public List<Clients> SubClients { get; set; }
}

I need it to have in the same class, the information of the Client, and the information of the SubClients... On server side works fine, but I need to use it on client side, and in the silverlight project I can't see the class definition... any idea...

Thanks... Miguel

Answer 1

You won't be able to see the entity framework types directly in Silverlight, because EF relies on the full .net framework, and is in your case a server-only technology.

To expose the EF types to a Silverlight client, you need some sort of server side service as a wrapper. I've used WCF data services (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/odata.aspx) for this exact requirement and it works quite nicely. WCF RIA services (http://www.silverlight.net/learn/advanced-techniques/wcf-ria-services/get-started-with-wcf-ria-services) is another alternative as well.

I think if you are only ever going have Silverlight clients consuming your data, WCF RIA services is the best choice. If you want a more broadly accessible service, use WCF Data Services.

We use WCF data services, because we have silverlight apps, WPF apps, and even Excel spreadsheets consuming the services.