reading database from Razor

Ok, I looked on StackOverflow and google and didn't found any solution.What I read on web is that calling a Controller from a Razor page is BAD and it said we need to rethink our programming.

Fine, I accept that. But I didn't find any other ways.Here the problem:

1. I got a .NET8 Blazor/Razor app with Microsoft Identity
2. The same Web App also have Api Controllers
3. One of theses controller can querying the Db for a webLink (stored) based on a stringId.Example: StringId is E4A1 and it represent: https://Google.ca/When querying the Api for "E4A1", it return "https://Google.ca/"
4. Querying the Controller (API) work fine, I need to be able to Query from a Razor page.

Here what I tried.

1. From Razor page, I add:

    @inject ApplicationDbContext _DbContext

2. [Link] Model look like this

    public class LinkModel {        [Key]        public int Id { get; set; }        [Required]        [MaxLength(8)]        public string StringId { get; set; } = "";        [MaxLength(512)]        public string Url { get; set; } = "";    }

3. From Razor page @code section, I have a function trying to call

    string strId = "E4A1";    LinkModel? objTable = await _DbContext.DbLinks.FirstOrDefaultAsync(w => w.StringId == strId);

VsStudio complain that FirstOrDefaultAsync DOES NOT EXIST in that context.

So what I did is, inside the LinkController, I created a fonction:

    public static class LinkFunctions {        public static async Task<string> GetUrlX(ApplicationDbContext objDbContext, string strHex32Id) {            LinkModel? objTable = await objDbContext.DbLinks.FirstOrDefaultAsync(w => w.StringId == strHex32Id);            return objTable.Url;        }    }

This is the exact same code but in the Controller

and I call it from my Razor page like this:

    string strId = "E4A1";    string strUrl = await LinkFunctions.GetUrlX(_DbContext, strId);

and that Work...

Here the questions:

1. Why it isn't working from the Razor page (same code) ?
2. Why is it bad to call the controller from the Razor page
3. How do I fix it in a better way ?

Thanks