Non-Static method requires a target? - linq

Question

I have never seen this error before and its very confusing, I am essentially trying to do something where I say find me all locations (will only return one) that match the location name passed in and the type:
string name = columns[40];
Location type = db.Locations.Where(l => l.name == name).FirstOrDefault();
Location loc = db.Locations.Where(l => l.name == name && l.type == type.type).FirstOrDefault();
There's probably a better way to do what I want in one fell swoop, but essentially I get the name from a column (this comes from a csv file), and then say, get me that locations information. After this I say ok now that I have all that jazz, go get me a location with this name and its type.
But I get the error:
Non-Static method requires a target
The top level method all this code runs in is:
static void Main(string[] args){}
Essentially its just a console app. So whats going on?
db is the context class, this should be obvious.
columns is me pulling the data from the csv file, in this case columns[40] would be something like "New York"
Full Error message from the stack trace: {"Non-static method requires a target."}
Note: The question posted as a "possible answer" does not help in this case as the main method I am running this code in is static.
Upon further investigation I found the name and type were null so I did the following fix:
if (name != null)
{
Location type = db.Locations.Where(l => l.name == name).FirstOrDefault();
Location loc = db.Locations.Where(l => l.name == name && l.type == type.type).FirstOrDefault();
locationNearbyId = loc.id;
// More code
}
Alas I still get the error at: Location loc = db.Locations.Where(l => l.name == name && l.type == type.type).FirstOrDefault();

Answer 1

I had this happen to me today. Come to find out, I was doing this:
Player player = db.Players
.Where(p => p.ClubID == course.Club.ID && p.IsActive == true && p.Phone != null)
.ToArray()
.SingleOrDefault(p => p.Phone.FormatPhoneNumber() == phone);
where course.Club was being lazy-loaded via EF from my database. At first, I thought my problem was the FormatPhoneNumber extension, but then found that removing the course.Club.ID fixed the issue:
int clubID = course.Club.ID;
Player player = db.Players
.Where(p => p.ClubID == clubID && p.IsActive == true && p.Phone != null)
.ToArray()
.SingleOrDefault(p => p.Phone.FormatPhoneNumber() == phone);
So, avoid using values gleaned from lazy-loaded objects in subsequent LINQ queries - assign them to local variables and then use those variables in your query.

Answer 2

Turns out that because name and type can be null type has to be set out side the if statement and thus i must check if type and name are null before continueing:
name = collumns[40];
type = db.Locations.Where(l => l.name == name).FirstOrDefault();
if (name != null && type != null)
{
Location loc = db.Locations.Where(l => l.name == name && l.type == type.type).FirstOrDefault();
//More code....
}

Answer 3

It is a fact that the problem is due to the null "type" object.
I would solve this way:
var tType = type?.type;
Location loc = db.Locations.Where(l => l.name == name && (type != null && l.type == tType)).FirstOrDefault();