title: Entity Framework join statement in a function
body: <p>I'm trying to create a function to grab a List&lt;>() of type "tableContact" which is an entity (sort of like when you do a simple select statement: query.ToList();)</p>
  
  <p>But this is becoming frustrating because I kept getting "null object reference" errors. For some reason "join" statement doesn't work, so I tried an alternate linq statement.</p>
  
  <p>I have an Object2Contacts table that I want to LEFT JOIN and I'm looking up my Object and trying to see all the contacts for this Object. I also can't figure out how to change an "anonymous type" back into an entity table.</p>
  
  <p>Also not every object has contacts, so sometimes null List&lt;> should be returned.</p>
  
  <pre><code>public List&lt;tableContact&gt; getContactsForObject(int oid)
      {
          if (oid &gt; 0)
          {
              var query = (from s in entities.tableContacts
                           from o in entities.tableObject2Contacts
                           where s.contact_id == o.contact_id
                           where o.object_id == oid                         
                           select new { s });
              if (query != null)
              {
                  IEnumerable&lt;tableContact&gt; e = (IEnumerable&lt;tableContact&gt;)query.ToList();
                  return (List&lt;tableContact&gt;)e;
              }
          }
          return new List&lt;tableContact&gt;();
      }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I want to then loop through the object returned... e.g.:</p>
  
  <pre><code>foreach ( tableContact c in MyList){
     WriteLine(c.Name);
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT</strong>
  I also tried:</p>
  
  <pre><code>List&lt;tableContacts&gt; contacts = (from s in entities.tableContacts
          join o in entities.tableObject2Contacts
          on s.contact_id equals o.contact_id
          where o.object_id == oid                         
          select s).ToList();
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Then I can't convert it back into a List and still "null reference".</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT 2</strong>
  Yes the query I am running may definitely bring in an "empty" list. I don't mind empty lists, but it shouldn't give "object null reference."</p>