EF Core Navigation Property Cycle

Question

Consider the following

Models:

public class Blog
{
    public Guid ID {get; set;}
    public string Name {get; set;}
    // more fields...

    // Navigation Property
    public IList<Post> Posts {get; set;}
}

public class Posts
{
    public Guid ID {get; set;}
    public Guid BlogID {get; set;}
    public string Author {get; set;}
    // more fields...

    // Navigation Property
    public Blog Blog {get; set;}
}

In DbContext.OnModelCreating :

// Primary Keys
modelBuilder.Entity<Blog>()
            .HasKey(c => c.ID);

modelBuilder.Entity<Post>()
            .HasKey(c => c.ID);

modelBuilder.Entity<Blog>()
            .HasMany(c => c.Posts)
            .WithOne(c => c.Blog)
            .HasForeignKey(c => c.BlogID)
            .HasPrincipalKey(c => c.ID);

modelBuilder.Entity<Post>()
            .WithOne(c => c.Blog)
            .HasMany(c => c.Posts)     
            .HasForeignKey(c => c.BlogID)
            .HasPrincipalKey(c => c.ID);

This all works, the problem is then I fetch a Blog it contains a Post which contains the Blog which contains a list of Posts which each contain the Blog and so on.

How can I limit this to a specific level of nesting ? I checked the docs and could not find a solution.

Answer 1

I don't think you can limit that at all. But also I don't think that can cause any issues.

EntityFramework is dealing with navigation properties by replacing (overriding) their functionality with actual query to the database. This approach is called LazyLoading .

That means, everytime you access the property, it just do a call to the database and brings the data for you, and it can do this forever, as you requesting it to.

I hope that explains it?

Further explanation can be found here .

Regards