ASP.NET MVC 5 API, Changing a class in GET function - asp.net-mvc

Question

I'm working on a dotnet mvc5 application. Here's a function from my api of customer controller
public IHttpActionResult GetCustomers()
{
var customerDtos = _context.Customers.ToList().Select(Mapper.Map<Customer, CustomerDto>);
return Ok(customerDtos);
}
I need to add "TYPEAHEAD" plugin to my application. The video series/instructor I'm following says to make the function code change to
public IHttpActionResult GetCustomers(string query = null)
{
var customersQuery = _context.Customers
.Include(c => c.MembershipType);
if (!String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(query))
customersQuery = customersQuery.Where(c => c.Name.Contains(query));
var customerDtos = customersQuery
.ToList()
.Select(Mapper.Map<Customer, CustomerDto>);
return Ok(customerDtos);
}
in order to make "TypeAhead" plug in work on my view.
The only problem is previously while creating customers I didn't feel the need to add "MembershipType" class to my customer. So how do I use the new code without MembershipType. Is there any other attribute I can replace it with? Name, ID etc.

Answer 1

.Include(c => c.MembershipType);
essentially means that you also want to include the 'child' collection of MembershipType
See here for more information on Loading Related Entities
For your case, you can simply omit this.
public IHttpActionResult GetCustomers(string query = null)
{
var customersQuery = _context.Customers;
if (!String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(query))
customersQuery = customersQuery.Where(c => c.Name.Contains(query));
var customerDtos = customersQuery
.ToList()
.Select(Mapper.Map<Customer, CustomerDto>);
return Ok(customerDtos);
}
You don't need to replace it with anything.
customersQuery is then an IQueryable<Customer> which the rest of this code can append Where clause to.
It is not executed against the database until the ToList call.