Using Find in CodeFirst (EntityFramework) to get non-primary keys

Question

My understanding is that find only takes the primary key as the parameter. That works great if the value you are looking for is actually the primary key. In my case, I have a class like this:

 public class Chamber
 {
    [Key]
    public int Id {get;set;}

    public string ChamberName { get; set; }
 }

I want to check whether a given ChamberName exists in either my context or the database itself. How can I do that? Do I have to somehow enumerate of the context myself first, then, look it up in the database with a call like db.Chambers.where(a=>a.ChamberName.equals...?

I can see it working well if ChamberName is my primary key, but it is not.

THanks,

Answer 1

There is a property called Local in the DbSet. You can query that first to find entities loaded to the context.

var entity = db.Chambers.Local.Where(/**/).SingleOrDefault();

if (entity == null)
{
   entity = db.Chambers.Where(/**/).SingleOrDefault();
}