How to decide a Primary Key from an Entity Collection programmatically - entity-framework

I'm encountering some problems importing my DB on Entity Framework. Some relationship between tables returns me some other entities without any primary key.. For my application I need to have a PK for every table.
Is there any way to say something like:
MyEntityCollection.SetKey("ColumnName")
Or something like that?
Thank you very much!

Take a look here, i discuss this in this answer,
EF4 Unknown Column In Field List
http://xhalent.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/configuring-entity-framework-4-codefirst/ has some detail around the two ways in EF4 of specifying a FK

Related

Update edmx after adding additional column to junction table

I'm using .Net 4.5, entity framework 5, database first. I have a junction (many-to-many) table in my database. For this example lets say the table is "StudentsCourses":
Students
-PkStudentId
-Name
Courses
-PkCourseId
-CourseNumber
StudentsCourses
-FkStudentId
-FkCourseId
This works just fine right now. The 'generate model from database' creates a Student entity with a navigation property to the Course entity. But here is where the trouble is:
I need to add another column to the StudentsCourses table. Lets just call this column "CourseYear". So our junction table would now look like this:
StudentsCourses
-FkStudentId
-FkCourseId
-CourseYear
So, I've added this column to the database and ran "Update Model from Database" on the edmx. I would expect to see an entity created for StudentCourses, with a navigation property to both Students and Courses. But no such entity is created. I still see the same two tables (Students & Courses) with the same navigation property as before.
I've done a lot of reading and researching, but haven't really come across a clear-cut answer. There is a wealth of information on code-first which I can't apply to my scenario. Is there a way to get what I'm after? Is it as simple as adding a PkId to the StudentCourses table? SQL Replication is preventing me from doing this. I would think the composite should suffice, but maybe EF needs a PK to do it's magic? I read a little bit about manually setting relationships, but could not find anything speaking to my particular situation. It could be that I am just missing a simple step in the process of updating the edmx from database. I've done this plenty of times when: adding new tables, adding columns, deleting columns, etc. I'm following the same steps as I always do, but maybe I need to do something different in this case?
Thanks ahead of time for any help. It is greatly appreciated. Please let me know if any more information would help.
From what I've gathered it appears as though EF will not generate a model for a table that doesn't have a Primary Key.
I'm a bit late for this, but you have the answer in this thread Updating Entity Framework Model after adding a field to a previous look up only table
As they say here, you have to delete the relationship between Students and Courses in the designer. Then update your model from the database, and make sure StudentsCourses table is checked in the Tables branch of the Add tab.

EF Nullable Foreign Key Relationship

I need some help today related to EF relationship. I have two lookup tables Country and Ethnicity. I want to have nullable foreign keys for both in one my table named Singles, so I defined a relationship in my class like
Single Relation
that generate a table like this, which is good so far
Single Relation Result
But I have other fields like Citizenship and CountryOfBirth which require a foreign key as well from Country table. So, I tried to do the same
Multiple Relation with Same Class
But things getting weird inside sql when table created.
Multiple Relation with Same Class Result
I can understand why it behaves odd but don't know how to make it work. Can you please suggest?
Thanks
You'll need to place your ForeignKey attributes on the navigational properties to point to the nullable ID field (instead of vice-versa), and then use the InverseProperty attribute to properly tell EF exactly what kind of relationship you are trying to accomplish.
This answer will be quite similar to that in this SO question.

Why does entity framework skip one of my tables?

Entity framwork made a entity for each of my tables except for one, and I'm not sure why. I select it when i generate it from the database.
Here is my entity framework diagram, and the diagram in SQL:
http://imgur.com/a/zY17T
Notice how RecipeMeal is missing from entity framework. Does anyone have an idea why this might be happening?
RecipeMeal is supposed to store if a recipe is breakfast, lunch etc. It's not a column of Recipes because a recipe could be a lunch OR dinner recipe, as an example.
I am using EF 5.0
Thanks.
Entity Framework has built-in support for many-to-many relationships.
The table is exposed through the two ICollection<T> properties in Meal and Recipe.
I also found that if your table doesn't have a primary key it will also get skipped. One of my tables was just a summary table and didn't really need a primary key and it wouldn't be included in the reverse engineer. As soon as I added a primary key it was picked up.

Why can't I have a referential constraint with a one to zero-to-one association?

I'm using entity framework 4.3 model first and can't figure out why I'm not allowed to have a one to zero-to-one association along with a referential constraint.
I have two main problems. I can't force referential integrity (without manual intervention) and my lazy loading doesn't seem to work... all my 1 to many associations are fine.
I basically have two tables, Loans and Contracts. The Contracts table has a scalar field for LoanId.
Until a loan is submitted, it does not have contract data and I chose not to place everything in the same table due to the size of the contract data. Ie. I don't want contract data retrieved from the database unless it is actually required.
I've searched around and can't seem to find any model first information that clearly answers my questions. Any information that may help me understand and clarify my problem would be greatly appreciated.
Regards
Craig
I guess LoanId field is not a primary key in Contracts table. In such case you cannot have such one-to-one relation because EF doesn't support it. When you create LoanId field in Contracts table the only way to force one-to-one relation is to add unique constraint on that field. EF currently doesn't support unique keys (except primary keys) so the only way to create one-to-one relation is to create relation between primary keys (Loan.Id <-> Contract.Id). If you don't follow this you will get error in designer.

Entity framework - "Problem in mapping fragments"-error. Help me understand the explanations of this error

Error 3007: Problem in Mapping Fragments starting at lines 186, 205: Non-Primary-Key column(s) [WheelID] are being mapped in both fragments to different conceptual side properties - data inconsistency is possible because the corresponding conceptual side properties can be independently modified.
I found several places on the web describing this error, but I simply don't understand them. (confused smiley goes here)
One
Two
Three
Four
There is something pretty fundamental here, I must be missing. Can you explain it, so that I understand it? Maybe using my real life example below?
Foreign key 1:N Wheels.Id -> Slices.WheelId
I add them to entity framework, and WheelId is not visible in the Slices-entity.
Doing some workaround (deleting the relationship from the db before adding tables to EF - then re-creating it and updating EF) I managed to get the WheelId to stay in Slices, but then I get the error mentioned at the top.
Since Slices.WheelId is an FK, you cannot expose it in your client model, period. There are ways to get the value, though.
var wheelId = someSlice.Wheels.ID;
Update In EF 4 you can do this by using FK Associations instead of independent associations.
Try to remove foreign property column from Entity set using entity model design it will solve your problem
For example
We have two tables one is customer and other one is order, using entity model design we added association between customers and orders when we do this Ado.net entity framework i will add navigation properties to both below tables.
Like
Customer.Orders - Here order is list
Order.Customer
One - Many relation.
So we need to remove property from with name CustomerId[Foreign key column] from Order entity set.
For reference:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/adodotnetentityframework/thread/2823634f-9dd1-4547-93b5-17bb8a882ac2/
I was able to overcome this problem by the following steps:
right click the designer window
Select 'update model from database'
Select Add AND make sure that the 'Include foreign key columns in the model' checkbox is selected.
click on Finish...
I had set foreign keys up in the database but framework still wasn't pulling them in correctly. So I tried to add the association myself. 
However, when I did this I would get a mapping error. It took me A WHILE but I figured out. What I did was set up the association using the entity toolbox association tool and then you have to double click on the association (1 to many) line and set the primary and foreign key there. Hopefully, this to help others who might have the same problem. I couldn't find the answer anywhere.
I had this problem for quite a different reason, and the message was slightly different; it didn't say "data inconsistency is possible because the corresponding conceptual side properties can be independently modified."
I have a table involved in my model with a binary column where I store image data. I only want this data returned when I need it (performance is a feature), so I split the table using a method similar to this. Later on, I added a property to that table, then updated the model from the database. The wizard added the property to both entity types that refer to the table with the added property. I had to delete it from one of them to solve the error.
I've had this happen because Entity Framework Update wizard mismapped some keys (or did not update?). As a result, some columns were mistakenly labeled as keys, while actual key columns were treated as plain columns.
The solution was to manually open EDMX file, find the entities, and update the keys.
Couldn't get any of the answer to work with EF6. The problem seems to be the framework doesn't import the foreign keys correctly as Associations. My solution was removing foreign keys from the tables, and then manually adding the associations using Entity Framework model, using the following steps: Entity Framework - Add Navigation Property Manually
For LinQ to Entities queries in EF1, my workaround for not having access to the foreign key as a property is with the following code, which does not produce a join query to the associated table:
dbContext.Table1s.FirstOrDefault(c => (int?)c.Table2.Id == null)
i.e, the generated SQL is:
...WHERE ([Extent1].[Table2Id] IS NULL)...
Solution is to allow deleting Rule = Cascade on Sql association.
Same thing as to be done on .edmx model, adding element to
association:
<Association Name="FK_Wheels_Slices">
<End Role="Wheels" Type= "your tipe here" Multiplicity="1">
<OnDelete Action="Cascade" />
</End>
</Association>
I had a table already mapped in EF. I added two more tables which had foreign keys in the previously added table. I then got the 3007 error.
To fix the error I deleted all three tables from the EDMX file, and then re-added them all at once together (via "Update Model from Database..."), instead of in stages.
I checked my Error List window and noticed I had errors in the model. Fixed them and all is well
in my case I solved this error by tick (include foreign key columns in the model)
- update Model from database
- tick (include foreign key columns in the model)
- finish