Stephen Shakespeare

LINQ and Entity Framework with DbContext – Convert Anonymous type to Strongly Typed – Bind to ListBox

[ Personally I have a sample of this in EFSample1.sln ]
To convert anonymous type to strongly typed, you can add a class that does what you want, then Select New … with {.ID = …}
This allows you to say get data from more than one table and still have a strongly typed output. Will not be updateable.

To fill a ListBox use

Imports System.Linq ‘if namespace not already imported

See http://wp.me/p17IS4-9S

Dim result = …GetEmployees
ListBox.DataSource = result.ToList

To save on setting the DisplayMember use .ToString in the class

Public Class EmployeeList
Property ID As Integer
Property FullName As String

Overrides Function ToString() As String
Return FullName
End Function

End Class

Public Class EmployeeEF

Private context As New EFWinFormsDBContext.TestEFIEntities

Function GetEmployees() As System.Linq.IQueryable(Of EmployeeList)

Dim result = From emp As Employee In context.Employees Join con As Contact In context.Contacts On emp.EmployeeID Equals con.ID Order By con.FullName
Select New EmployeeList With {.ID = emp.EmployeeID, .FullName = con.FullName}

Return result

End Function

End Class