Entity Framework TPH Inheritance Data Modeling Issues - entity-framework

Question

I'm new to Entity Framework and C#/.Net and trying to create a TPH inheritance model, I'm not sure if I should be or not, so if not, please advise,
Here's the model:
public abstract class Vote
{
public int VoteID { get; set; }
public int UserID { get; set; }
public bool Value { get; set; }
public DateTime DateCreated { get; set; }
public User User { get; set; }
}
public class ProjectVote_ : Vote
{
public int ProjectID { get; set; }
public virtual Project Project { get; set; }
}
public class CommentVote_ : Vote //There are three more like this, votes for different hings
{
public int CommentID { get; set; }
public virtual Comment Comment { get; set; }
}
Now the Project model (comment and model is similar)
public class Project
{
public int ProjectID { get; set; }
public string Title { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<Vote> Vote { get; set; }
}
What happens is that ICollection creates a database column Project_ProjectID as the foreign key in the Vote table (I think) instead of using the ProjectID I defined. How do I fix it or should I model it differently. If the fluent API is the way to fix it, I don't know how to do that.
In the end I want to be able to use one table to store 5 different types of votes.

Answer 1

When you have related entities you don't need to have a property to store the FK in your model. Entity framework knows that it needs to make a FK to the Project table in ProjectVote when it detects Project in your ProjectVote_ model. Same thing with User and UserId and Comment and CommentId. You don't need to have a property that stores the FK in your model.
You are getting the FK column with the name you don't like "Project_ProjectID" because Entity framework is detecting that it needs to create a FK for your navigation property "Project". It's using it's own naming convention to create the column hence "Project_ProjectID".
If you want to provide your own name for the column override OnModelCreating in your DBContext class and add this fluent mapping.
protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
{
modelBuilder.Entity<Project>()
.HasMany(p => p.Vote)
.HasRequired(v => v.Project) //or .WithOptional(v => v.Project)
.Map(m => m.MapKey("ProjectId")); //or any other name you want.
}
And for the future this is a helpful reference for how to use the Fluent API. For example here is some documentation on how to custimize TPH with fluent.
Hope that helps!