How to select a single column with Entity Framework?

You can use LINQ’s .Select() to do that. In your case it would go something like:

string Name = yourDbContext
  .MyTable
  .Where(u => u.UserId == 1)
  .Select(u => u.Name)
  .SingleOrDefault(); // This is what actually executes the request and return a response

If you are expecting more than one entry in response, you can use .ToList() instead, to execute the request. Something like this, to get the Name of everyone with age 30:

string[] Names = yourDbContext
  .MyTable
  .Where(u => u.Age == 30)
  .Select(u => u.Name)
  .ToList();

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