Identity with efcore for customer and staff - entity-framework

Question

I currently design table for customer and staff for my ecommerce app and I am using asp.net core identity. I want to know if I should use 1 table user (aka aspnetuser) for staff and customer or should I separate them and use user id as foreign key? If separating them 2 new table with foreign key is user id, how can I use user manager for creating account for staff and customer?
Thanks.

Answer 1

You can extend the base IdentityUser class in order to create a table with additional fields, like:
public class MyIdentityUser : IdentityUser<string>
{
public string FirstName { get; set; }
public string LastName { get; set; }
public string Type { get; set; }
...
where the Type field could be Staff or Customer.
Or you can use one or more additional table and use the Id as defined in IdentityUser class from Microsoft.ASpNetCore.Identity:
public class IdentityUser<TKey> where TKey : IEquatable<TKey>
{
/// <summary>
/// Initializes a new instance of <see cref="IdentityUser{TKey}"/>.
/// </summary>
public IdentityUser() { }
/// <summary>
/// Initializes a new instance of <see cref="IdentityUser{TKey}"/>.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="userName">The user name.</param>
public IdentityUser(string userName) : this()
{
UserName = userName;
}
/// <summary>
/// Gets or sets the primary key for this user.
/// </summary>
[PersonalData]
public virtual TKey Id { get; set; }
...
you can define the type of your Id field, like my previous example, and use the same type on a related field (like IdentityUserId) in your custom table/tables.
If you extend the base IdentityUser class you need to create a derived context with this declaration, like this:
namespace MyProject.Infrastructure.Contexts
{
public class MyContext : IdentityDbContext<MyIdentityUser>
{
...