Lazy loading
Entities have the option to lazy load properties and relations. Although there is support for this, always try to load the necessary members using the right load configuration and load options. This reduces overhead.
However, sometimes entities are passed between components and the required members might not be there. In these situations, lazy loading is a valid use case.
When lazy loading a member, the member is fetched from the server by doing some IO. Then the member is added to the entity instance.
To lazy load one or more members, there is always a required call to the server. Try to group as many lazy loading as possible in one go (see below).
Note that lazy loading always checks if the members are already present, and if they are no IO will be done. The SDK will never overwrite loaded members, only add members that are not loaded.
Preconditions
To be able to lazy load members, the entity must exist in M. There is no point in trying to lazy load members on a newly created entity instance as there are no missing members anyway.
Lazy loading a single member
To lazy load and return a property:
IProperty titleProperty = await entity.GetPropertyAsync("Title");
To lazy load a property and return its value directly:
string title = await titleProperty.GetPropertyValueAsync<string>("Title"));
To lazy load and return a relation:
IRelation relation = await entity.GetRelationAsync("AssetTypeToAsset");
There are many more overloads for loading properties and relations. See the API reference for a complete overview.
Lazy loading multiple members
To lazy load multiple properties in one call:
var propertyLoadOption = new PropertyLoadOption("propertyName1", "propertyName2");
await entity.LoadPropertiesAsync(propertyLoadOption);
To lazy load multiple relations in one call:
var relationLoadOption = new RelationLoadOption("relationName1", "relationName2");
await entity.LoadRelationsAsync(relationLoadOption);
To lazy load multiple both properties and relations in one call:
var propertyLoadOption = new PropertyLoadOption("propertyName1", "propertyName2");
var relationLoadOption = new RelationLoadOption("relationName1", "relationName2");
await entity.LoadMembersAsync(propertyLoadOption, relationLoadOption);