Adding Additional Query To Return(view)

I have a ViewModel and I currently return a query where if the movie has employees and they have a role then that movie, actor(s), and role(s) are all returned. Now I want to add a

Solution 1:

I think you should add a property IEnumerable<string> employeeNames to the view model.

var query =
from m in db.Movies
from me in m.MovieEmployees
where (parameter == 1 && m.Name.Contains(searchString)) || 
      (parameter == 2 && me.Employee.Name.Contains(searchString)) || 
      (parameter == 3 && me.Role.RoleType.Contains(searchString))
selectnew StarringViewModel
{ 
    employeeID = e.ID,
    movieID = m.ID, roleID = r.ID,
    movieName = m.Name, 
    movieDescription = m.Description, 
    movieReleaseDate = m.ReleaseDate, 
    employeeBirthdate = me.Employee.Birthday, 
    employeeName = me.Employee.Name, Role = me.Role.RoleType,
    employeeNames = m.MovieEmployees
                    .Selext(x => x.Employee.Name)
};

(Notice, by the way, that I use navigation properties rather than joins).

You can show the employees by concatenating them:

string.Join(", ", employeeNames)

either in the view, or in a property like EmployeeNamesString in the view model.

An example of how to do it in the view model:

publicstring EmployeeNamesString
{
    get { returnstring.Join(", ", this.employeeNames); }
}

and display EmployeeNamesString in the view.