Multi-Mapper to create object hierarchy

Question

I've been playing around with this for a bit, because it seems like it feels a lot like the documented posts/users example, but its slightly different and isn't working for me.

Assuming the following simplified setup (a contact has multiple phone numbers):

public class Contact
{
    public int ContactID { get; set; }
    public string ContactName { get; set; }
    public IEnumerable<Phone> Phones { get; set; }
}

public class Phone
{
    public int PhoneId { get; set; }
    public int ContactID { get; set; } // foreign key
    public string Number { get; set; }
    public string Type { get; set; }
    public bool IsActive { get; set; }
}

I'd love to end up with something that returns a Contact with multiple Phone objects. That way, if I had 2 contacts, with 2 phones each, my SQL would return a join of those as a result set with 4 total rows. Then Dapper would pop out 2 contact objects with two phones each.

Here is the SQL in the stored procedure:

SELECT *
FROM Contacts
    LEFT OUTER JOIN Phones ON Phones.ReferenceId=Contacts.ReferenceId
WHERE clientid=1

I tried this, but ended up with 4 Tuples (which is OK, but not what I was hoping for... it just means I still have to re-normalize the result):

var x = cn.Query<Contact, Phone, Tuple<Contact, Phone>>("sproc_Contacts_SelectByClient",
                              (co, ph) => Tuple.Create(co, ph), 
                                          splitOn: "PhoneId", param: p, 
                                          commandType: CommandType.StoredProcedure);

and when I try another method (below), I get an exception of "Unable to cast object of type 'System.Int32' to type 'System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1[Phone]'."

var x = cn.Query<Contact, IEnumerable<Phone>, Contact>("sproc_Contacts_SelectByClient",
                               (co, ph) => { co.Phones = ph; return co; }, 
                                             splitOn: "PhoneId", param: p,
                                             commandType: CommandType.StoredProcedure);

Am I just doing something wrong? It seems just like the posts/owner example, except that I'm going from the parent to the child instead of the child to the parent.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Here's a reusable solution that is pretty easy to use. It is a slight modification of Andrews answer.

public static IEnumerable<TParent> QueryParentChild<TParent, TChild, TParentKey>(
    this IDbConnection connection,
    string sql,
    Func<TParent, TParentKey> parentKeySelector,
    Func<TParent, IList<TChild>> childSelector,
    dynamic param = null, IDbTransaction transaction = null, bool buffered = true, string splitOn = "Id", int? commandTimeout = null, CommandType? commandType = null)
{
    Dictionary<TParentKey, TParent> cache = new Dictionary<TParentKey, TParent>();

    connection.Query<TParent, TChild, TParent>(
        sql,
        (parent, child) =>
            {
                if (!cache.ContainsKey(parentKeySelector(parent)))
                {
                    cache.Add(parentKeySelector(parent), parent);
                }

                TParent cachedParent = cache[parentKeySelector(parent)];
                IList<TChild> children = childSelector(cachedParent);
                children.Add(child);
                return cachedParent;
            },
        param as object, transaction, buffered, splitOn, commandTimeout, commandType);

    return cache.Values;
}

Example usage

public class Contact
{
    public int ContactID { get; set; }
    public string ContactName { get; set; }
    public List<Phone> Phones { get; set; } // must be IList

    public Contact()
    {
        this.Phones = new List<Phone>(); // POCO is responsible for instantiating child list
    }
}

public class Phone
{
    public int PhoneID { get; set; }
    public int ContactID { get; set; } // foreign key
    public string Number { get; set; }
    public string Type { get; set; }
    public bool IsActive { get; set; }
}

conn.QueryParentChild<Contact, Phone, int>(
    "SELECT * FROM Contact LEFT OUTER JOIN Phone ON Contact.ContactID = Phone.ContactID",
    contact => contact.ContactID,
    contact => contact.Phones,
    splitOn: "PhoneId");