Unable to create a constant value of type Only primitive types or enumeration types are supported in this context

Question

I am getting this error for the query below

Unable to create a constant value of type API.Models.PersonProtocol. Only primitive types or enumeration types are supported in this context

ppCombined below is an IEnumerable object of PersonProtocolType, which is constructed by concat of 2 PersonProtocol lists.

Why is this failing? Can't we use LINQ JOIN clause inside of SELECT of a JOIN?

var persons = db.Favorites
    .Where(x => x.userId == userId)
    .Join(db.Person, x => x.personId, y => y.personId, (x, y) =>
        new PersonDTO
        {
            personId = y.personId,
            addressId = y.addressId,                   
            favoriteId = x.favoriteId,
            personProtocol = (ICollection<PersonProtocol>) ppCombined
                .Where(a => a.personId == x.personId)
                .Select( b => new PersonProtocol()
                 {
                     personProtocolId = b.personProtocolId,
                     activateDt = b.activateDt,
                     personId = b.personId
                 })
        });

Answer 1

This cannot work because ppCombined is a collection of objects in memory and you cannot join a set of data in the database with another set of data that is in memory. You can try instead to extract the filtered items personProtocol of the ppCombined collection in memory after you have retrieved the other properties from the database:

var persons = db.Favorites
    .Where(f => f.userId == userId)
    .Join(db.Person, f => f.personId, p => p.personId, (f, p) =>
        new // anonymous object
        {
            personId = p.personId,
            addressId = p.addressId,   
            favoriteId = f.favoriteId,
        })
    .AsEnumerable() // database query ends here, the rest is a query in memory
    .Select(x =>
        new PersonDTO
        {
            personId = x.personId,
            addressId = x.addressId,   
            favoriteId = x.favoriteId,
            personProtocol = ppCombined
                .Where(p => p.personId == x.personId)
                .Select(p => new PersonProtocol
                {
                    personProtocolId = p.personProtocolId,
                    activateDt = p.activateDt,
                    personId = p.personId
                })
                .ToList()
        });