What is the best way to remove multiple records in one go with LINQ?
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1If you need to do something like `DELETE FROM table WHERE ...` then consider using SQL. LINQ may not be the best tool for this job. – Myster Jun 11 '14 at 21:36
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The following is more for LINQ to Entities, but it may help: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/869209/bulk-deleting-via-linq](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/869209/bulk-deleting-via-linq) – Jagd May 15 '09 at 18:51
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LINQ doesn't delete, it only queries. Deleting records with a LINQ-based ORM is never done by a LINQ statement. All of the answers so far ignore that. Besides that, the term "in one go" is vague. None of the common LINQ-based ORMs will bulk-delete in one SQL statement. Therefore, IMO there is no "best" way, because "best" should at least be "good". LINQ-based ORMs don't even offer a "good" way to do bulk delete. – Gert Arnold Jun 01 '22 at 13:44
9 Answers
To delete records with Linq2Sql
CustomerDataContext ctx = new CustomerDataContext("connection string"); var customers = ctx.Customers.Where(c => c.Name == "david"); ctx.Customers.DeleteAllOnSubmit(customers); ctx.SubmitChanges();

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4This is one of the easiest ways but i would not say is the most efficient. There actually is not any optimization being performed. The generated SQL enumerates all objects that match your query, then manually iterates over them to delete them. See this post - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/869209/bulk-deleting-via-linq – David May 15 '09 at 18:56
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Cannot implicitly convert type 'System.Linq.IQueryable
' to 'RajrangData.tblRelatedProduct'. An explicit conversion exists (are you missing a cast? – rahularyansharma Apr 01 '13 at 13:11 -
Surely you can't store multiple `Customer` objects in one `Customer` reference... maybe you want something like: `List
customers = ctx.Customers.Where(c => c.Name == "david").ToList();` – Sheridan May 10 '13 at 10:19
Using entity framework 6
using (EntitiesContext db = new EntitiesContext(connString))
{
// Retrieve all records from database for deletion
IEnumerable<entity> entityList = db.entity.where(x => x.id == id).toList();
// Use Remove Range function to delete all records at once
db.entity.RemoveRange(entityList);
// Save changes
db.SaveChanges();
}

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Here is How I solved the problem :
try
{
List<MaterialPartSerialNumber> list = db.MaterialPartSerialNumbers.Where(s => s.PartId == PartId && s.InventoryLocationId == NewInventoryLocationId && s.LocationId == LocationId).ToList();
db.MaterialPartSerialNumbers.RemoveRange(list);
db.SaveChanges();
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
string error = ex.Message;
}
First, you can find a list of the items you want to delete.
Then, you can use the function RemoveRange(**list_of_item_to_delete**)
so that it removes each instance in the list present in the database.
According to the MSDN, the method removes a range of elements from the List.
For more information, check it here https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/y33yd2b5(v=vs.110).aspx

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1It works because we are passing to our Object database a list of objects that belongs to that table, so the function RemoveRange can delete all the objects in that list with 1 line code. – Pedro Henrique Sep 16 '20 at 21:20
The good old SPROCs.....
You can drag the SPROC to your DBML file and it will generate a rich method in your databasecontext class.

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Removing many records based on single where clause
context.EntityModel
.RemoveAll(r => r.property == "propertyEntered");
But you could also Remove records from the database that don't exist in List<ListOfBadRecords>
context.EntityModel
.Where(w => w.propertyID == ID).ToList()
.RemoveAll(r => !ListOfBadRecords.Any(a => a.anyID == r.propertyID ));
Edit:
Unsure wich is quicker but you could do the 2nd query with this also
.RemoveAll(r => !ListOfBadRecords.Select(s=>s.propertyID ).Contains(w.propertyID ))
Edit2: don't forget context.SaveChanges();
as i did in the first draft

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This is what I used, first create an IENumerable object of the table where are the records to be removed are, then just use RemoveRange, and finally just save changes to database. Let's say you want to remove all products from one specific supplier ID on the Products table, this is how you could do that.
IEnumerable<Products> ProductsToRemove= db.Products.Where(x => x.SupplierId== Supplierid);
db.Products.RemoveRange(ProductsToRemove);
db.SaveChanges();

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I agree with Khurram, it's much more efficient to do this with a simple stored procedure with LINQ (provided you have sufficient permissions in SQL to do this). I'll augment this with an example.
The stored procedure:
CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[RemovePermissionsFromRole]
(
@ROLE_ID int
)
AS
BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON;
DELETE FROM [RolePermissions] WHERE [RoleID] = @ROLE_ID;
END
Drag the stored procedure from the database explorer onto the methods pane in your DBML file. Save the file. And in code:
if (Request.QueryString["RoleID"] != null) {
int roleID = Convert.ToInt32(Request.QueryString["RoleID"]);
SETSDataContext context = new SETSDataContext();
context.RemovePermissionsFromRole(roleID);
}

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maybe its litle late for this answer but today I ran into this demand myself I and I came up with this solution
CustomerDataContext ctx = new CustomerDataContext("connection string");
ctx.Customers.DeleteAllOnSubmit(ctx.Customers.Where(c => c.Name == "david"));
ctx.SubmitChanges();

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4Surely you can't claim to have 'come up' with that solution when all you did was move the declaration of `cust` from the most popular answer to the `DeleteAllOnSubmit` method. – Sheridan Jul 18 '12 at 13:54
With just Entity Framework I found this to be the tightest code.
db.PreperProperties.RemoveRange(db.PreperProperties.Where(c => c.preperFk == prpr.id));
db.SaveChanges();

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