How to map multiple tables into one Entity in EF7 - entity-framework

I have 2 tables in different schemas:
Base.Person
ID
FirstName
LastName
Enrollment.Student
PersonID
StudentNo
This is related one-to-one.
Now in my DbContext, I want to have a DbSet named Students but I want its properties mapped to Person and Students. In particular, I want to get Person.ID, Person.FirstName, Person.LastName, Student.StudentNo mapped into my Student class.
The Student class is:
public class Student
{
public int ID { get; set;}
public string FirstName { get; set;}
public string MiddleName { get; set;}
public string StudentNo { get; set;}
}
One additional question that I'd like to ask which is not related to my problem above but it will be clearer to ask if the example above is present, in designing your DbContext, is DbContext intended to make the whole of the database available to you or is it ok just to expose what you want? For example, in my question above, I don't have a Person DbSet.

You cannot currently do this in EF 7 EF Core. However, you can model one to one relationships like this:
[Table("Student", Schema = "Enrollment")]
public class Student
{
[Key]
public string StudentNo { get; set; }
[ForeignKey("PersonId")]
public Person Person { get; set; }
[Column("PersonID")] // <-- if your db is case sensitive
public int PersonId { get; set; }
}
[Table("Person", Schema="Base")]
public class Person
{
// [Key] - not needed as EF conventions will set this as the "key"
[Column("ID")] // again, if case sensitive
public int Id { get; set; }
public string FirstName { get; set; }
public string LastName { get; set; }
}
// in code, use .Include to materialize dependent entities like so....
context.Students.Include(s => s.Person).Where(s => s.Person.FirstName == "Bob");
For more info on modeling, see https://docs.efproject.net/en/latest/modeling/relationships.html#one-to-one

Related

How to change a one-to-many relationship to a many-to-many relationship in Entity Framework Code First

I have two tables: Place, and MenuSection, that currently have a one-to-many relationship defined like so:
public class Place
{
[DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
[Key]
public int PlaceID { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<MenuSection> MenuSections { get; set; }
}
public class MenuSection
{
[Key]
public int MenuSectionID { get; set; }
public int PlaceID { get; set; }
}
However, I now need a many-to-many relationship. If I was just starting out then this would be achieved by changing the MenuSection class to look like this:
public class MenuSection
{
[Key]
public int MenuSectionID { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<Place> Places { get; set; }
}
The problem is I already have vast amounts of data and business logic associated with the current relationship. So I figure I'll have to leave the PlaceID property in for now and add the places collection.
My question then is: how do I then tell EF the relationship is now many-to-many and to populate the auto-generated joining table with the existing relationships so that I can then remove the PlaceID property from the MenuSection class?
Alternatively I suppose I could manually create a joining table and rewrite all the business logic, manually move the existing relationships over and rewrite all the business logic like so:
public class Place
{
[Key]
[ForeignKey("Place")]
public int PlaceID { get; set; }
[Key]
[ForeignKey("MenuSection")]
public int MenuSectionID { get; set; }
public virtual Place Place { get; set; }
public virtual MenuSection MenuSection { get; set; }
}
I'm surprised this question hasn't been asked before so I just wanted to check I haven't missed a trick?

Store extending classes in different tables

I have an abstract superclass which contains a [Key] field.
That class is then extended by 2 different classes which share this [Key] field, but have some fields of their own also.
But the problem is, when I create 2 DbSet<> objects for these 2 extending classes, they get put in the same table, and their fields get combined into that table.
So in my Context class, I have defined these:
DbSet<EmployeeAccount> EmployeeAccounts;
DbSet<PatientAccount> PatientAccounts;
I was expecting a separate table for each of these entities, but I got just 1 big table, and both EmployeeAccounts and PatientAccounts work with that 1 table (this leaves me with couple of columns in every row being empty).
I'm guessing this is happening because PatientAccount and EmployeeAccount have the same [Key] from their superclass.
Abstract class is really simple and looks like this:
public abstract class UserAccount : Entity<int>
{
[Key]
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Username { get; set; }
public string Password { get; set; }
}
Extending classes are the following:
public class EmployeeAccount : UserAccount
{
[ForeignKey("Employee")]
public int EmployeeId { get; set; }
public Employee Employee { get; set; }
[Column(TypeName = "nvarchar(24)")]
public EmployeeType EmployeeType { get; set; }
}
and
public class PatientAccount : UserAccount
{
[ForeignKey("Patient")]
public int PatientId { get; set; }
public Patient Patient { get; set; }
public IEnumerable<FavoriteDoctor> FavouriteDoctors { get; set; }
}
Am i doing something wrong, or is this the expected behaviour?
If expected, is there a way for me to say to the EF to create 2 separate tables for these entities, even though they share the same [Key] field and superclass?
Thanks in advance.

EF Core 2 duplicate column created with foreign key relationship

I'm trying add migration using EF core 2 code first method. The issue is that, the entities with foreign key relationship are created with a foreign key id suffixed with '1' at the end and a redundant column with the same name but without the 1 at the end which is not a foreign key.
Examples are my 2 classes, Store and StoreVisit as shown below:
Store
[Table("Store")]
public class Store
{
public Store()
{
StoreVisits = new HashSet<StoreVisit>();
}
[Key]
public int StoreId { get; set; }
[StringLength(30)]
public string ShopName { get; set; }
[StringLength(50)]
public string ShopKeeper { get; set; }
public string ContactNo { get; set; }
[StringLength(70)]
public string Address { get; set; }
[StringLength(20)]
public string Street { get; set; }
[StringLength(50)]
public string City { get; set; }
public IEnumerable<StoreVisit> StoreVisits { get; set; }
}
Store Visit
[Table("StoreVisit")]
public class StoreVisit
{
[Key]
public int StoreVisitId { get; set; }
[StringLength(50)]
public string Location { get; set; }
[StringLength(50)]
public string Notes { get; set; }
[DataType(DataType.Time)]
public DateTime StartTime { get; set; }
[DataType(DataType.Time)]
public DateTime EndTime { get; set; }
public Store Store { get; set; }
}
The Visit class is created in the database with the column shown in the image below:
As you can see, the StoreVisit table has columns "StoreId1" which is the actual foreign key and "StoreId" which is not a foreign key.
I have even configured the relationship with Fluent API as below:
modelBuilder.Entity<Store>()
.HasMany(c => c.StoreVisits)
.WithOne(e => e.Store)
.IsRequired();
Can someone help.
Note that Entity Framework Core is smart enough to detect relationships among your classes which will be turned into database tables with relationships if you use its conventions. So this is redundant to use annotations like [Key] above StoreId property.
Second thing, As an advice, try to use simple and clean names for classes or properties as they can be potentially similar to those automatically created by EF. For example, in your case I prefer to avoid using store inside StoreVisit class name again (e.g in case of many to many relationship, derived table is named StoreVisit like one that you employed just without 's', Although your case is one to many),
And Final tip is the reason for appearing redundant StoreId column. Actually, In your case, this is not necessary to use Fluent API as EF can detect the relationship. In addition, you've written wrong configuration for modelBuilder. So remove it and let EF to generate it (unless you plan to have fully defined relationship to consume its advantages in your code).
The StoreId is one that you told EF to generate it (as required)
in modelBuilder.
The StoreId1 is EF Auto generated column (Foreign Key) based on one
to many relationship. '1' is appended in order to avoid column name duplication.
A foreign key needs to be defined on the class.
[Table("StoreVisit")]
public class StoreVisit
{
[Key]
public int StoreVisitId { get; set; }
public int StoreId { get; set; }
[StringLength(50)]
public string Location { get; set; }
[StringLength(50)]
public string Notes { get; set; }
[DataType(DataType.Time)]
public DateTime StartTime { get; set; }
[DataType(DataType.Time)]
public DateTime EndTime { get; set; }
public Store Store { get; set; }
}
It also would hurt to add the foreign key reference to the Fluent API.
modelBuilder.Entity<Store>()
.HasMany(c => c.StoreVisits)
.WithOne(e => e.Store)
.HasForeignKey(e => e.StoreId)
.IsRequired();

Entity Framework : Code First Approach. Creating Entities using TPT inheritance

I am new to entity framework and I am using code first approach to create entities using TPT inheritance.
My requirement is to create the entities as per the attached diagram where ID is PK for Customers table and FK for the AddressDetails and ContactDetails table. Based on the keys I also need to create the association and navigation properties for the entities. Table Diagram
In my code I have created entities as
public class Customer
{
[Key]
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
public int ZipCode { get; set; }
public virtual ContactDetails ContactDetails { get; set; }
public virtual AddressDetails AddressDetails { get; set; }
}
[Table("ContactDetails")]
public class ContactDetails: Customer
{
public string MobileNo { get; set; }
public string EmailId { get; set; }
}
[Table("AddressDetails")]
public class AddressDetails: Customer
{
public string BillingAddress { get; set; }
public string DeliveryAddress { get; set; }
}
My question is, have I created the association and navigation properties correctly or do I need to add them in the ContactDetails and AddressDetails class as well? Also, when I run the code the entities are getting created in the database but for the Customer table there are 2 additional columns created as AddressDetails_Id(FK,int,null) and ContactDetails_Id(FK,int,null). I think they are created because of the navigation property but I do not need these columns in the database to be created. Also the values are always null in these two columns.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Invalid Column Name with EF

I modified the table UserProfile in the database with some extra columns and then modified the UserProfile class to reflect them:
[Table("UserProfile")]
public class UserProfile
{
[Key]
[DatabaseGeneratedAttribute(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
public int UserId { get; set; }
public string UserName { get; set; }
public string Firstname { get; set; }
public string Surname { get; set; }
public string School { get; set; }
}
Obviously they are FirstName, Surname and School. For some reason though despite the register action saving details into all 3 of these new columns when I try to load the data via:
var context = new UsersContext();
var user = context.UserProfiles.First(n => n.UserName == model.UserName);
It says that School is an invalid ColumnName. I checked it was a string in both class and table so bit confused how to debug, help!
(Continued from comments on OP)
Rather than doing this manually, you should consider using the EF migrations framework - There are a number of benefits and it's more future-proof in case internal EF functionality changes.
See here for more information on migrations