I have a lot of “repo” classes which load in a tables rows and then keeps them in memory, providing a way to get them without re-querying the database.

Is there a way I can get rid of this? If I inject my dbContext and query the DbSet it uses a new query every time?

LoadInitialDataAsync gets called on bootup, then I use TryGetByCodeName throughout my application when needed.

Example:

public class TabRepository(SadieContext dbContext)
{
    private Dictionary<string, NavigatorTab> _tabs = new();

    public async Task LoadInitialDataAsync()
    {
        _tabs = await dbContext.Set<NavigatorTab>()
            .Include(x => x.Categories)
            .ToDictionaryAsync(x => x.Name, x => x);
    }

    public bool TryGetByCodeName(string codeName, out NavigatorTab? tab) => 
        _tabs.TryGetValue(codeName, out tab);
}

With context:

var tabs = await dbContext.Set<NavigatorTab>()
    .Include(x => x.Categories)
    .ToDictionaryAsync(x => x.Name, x => x)