Bulk-Deleting in Linq to Entities

Bulk-deleting in LINQ to Entities

The question is an old one (from before EF5 existed). For anyone who's using EF5, EntityFramework.Extended does this in a snap.

How to Delete multiple records in Linq to Entity?

You can do the following, which is technically still a loop.

obj.tblA.Where(x => x.fid == i).ToList().ForEach(obj.tblA.DeleteObject);
obj.SaveChanges();

The alternative is calling the SQL directly.

Deleting multiple records with Entity Framework using a single LINQ query

1. Install Entity Framework Extended Library
   (PM> Install-Package EntityFramework.Extended)

2. Import EntityFramework.Extensions in your code

3. Delete records specified by inner query

   context.Orders.Where(o=>o.User_ID == 1).Delete();
   

Deletes all records inside Orders with userID = 1

How do I delete multiple rows in Entity Framework (without foreach)

If you don't want to execute SQL directly calling DeleteObject in a loop is the best you can do today.

However you can execute SQL and still make it completely general purpose via an extension method, using the approach I describe here.

Although that answer was for 3.5. For 4.0 I would probably use the new ExecuteStoreCommand API under the hood, instead of dropping down to the StoreConnection.

bulk delete in entity framework

There is an interesting NuGet package that lets you do batch deletes and updates:

Linq to Entities Remove without fetching

You can have a look at the EntityFramework.Extended Library which offers you to write the below query:

//delete all Settings where UserId matches
db.Settings.Where(s=> s.UserId == Uid).Delete();

Docs:

A current limitations of the Entity Framework is that in order to
update or delete an entity you have to first retrieve it into memory.
Now in most scenarios this is just fine. There are however some
scenarios where performance would suffer. Also, for single deletes,
the object must be retrieved before it can be deleted requiring two
calls to the database. Batch update and delete eliminates the need to
retrieve and load an entity before modifying it.

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