Select inside Include in EF Core

I have an entity that looks like this (partially removed for brevity, it includes many other properties):

public class Tender
{
    [Key]
    [DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string CreatorId { get; set; }
    [ForeignKey("CreatorId")]
    public virtual AppUser Creator { get; set; }
    public ICollection<TenderCircle> TenderCircles { get; set; } = new List<TenderCircle>();
}

The TenderCircles property is used to provide many-to-many relationship with another entity called Circle. TenderCircle entity looks like this:

public class TenderCircle
{
    public int TenderId { get; set; }
    [ForeignKey("TenderId")]
    public Tender Tender { get; set; }
    public int CircleId { get; set; }
    [ForeignKey("CircleId")]
    public Circle Circle { get; set; }
}

So, I’m doing the following query (partially removed for brevity, normally it includes many other Include and ThenInclude statements):

return _context.Tenders
               .Include(t => t.Creator)
               .Include(t => t.TenderCircles.Select(tc => new { CirlceId = tc.CircleId, TenderId = tc.TenderId }))
               .ToList();

But, it simply doesn’t work. What I want to achieve is that I only want to get the TenderId and CircleId properties from TenderCircle and ignore the actual Tender and Circle objects. How can I achieve this in EF Core?

[ajcvickers]

@etairi Not currently, no. This is because the Tender entity is loaded, and the relationship from Tender to TenderCircles is loaded. Since the navigation property is part of a relationship that is being explicitly loaded it will always be set. The navigation property could be removed if it is not needed, but if the navigation exists and the relationship is loaded, then the navigation will be set.

[etairi]

@ajcvickers Okay. Thanks for info!