C# Entity Framework Core how to add nested ThenInclude for User -> Manage relation

Question

I have an entity called User and it has a navigation property Manager' which refers to a User entity.

public class User 
{
     public virtual User Manager { get; set; }
}

    return await _context.User
                         .AsNoTracking()
                         .Include(user => user.Manager)
                         .ThenInclude(manager => manager.Manager)

private int? FindUser(int tagId, User user) 
{
    if (user.Manager == null)
    {
        Log.Error($"Cannot find User");
        return null;
    }
    
    if (!user.Manager.UserTag.Any(x => !x.Disabled && x.TagId == tagId))
    {
        return FindExCoUser(tagId, user.Manager); 
    }           
}

My requirement is for some cases I had to go up in the hierarchy of user managers'. In the above query I get only the current user and his manager but if I had to go up in the hierarchy, the manager is returned as null.

Do I need to keep adding .ThenInclude but how many times?

Or is there a better solution to achieve this?

Thanks

Answer 1

You can recursively select your managers. Here is an example I found on the Internet: https://michaelceber.medium.com/implementing-a-recursive-projection-query-in-c-and-entity-framework-core-240945122be6

But if you want to select all managers, your exit condition must be user.Manager == null instead of a max depth.