NullReferenceException while trying to including a one-to-many relationship item after saving parent - entity-framework

Question

Framework: I'm using using MVC 3 + EntityFramework 4.1 Code-First.
Concept: One Legislation entity has many Provision entities. The idea is that the user enters a Legislation entity, that gets saved then the function that saves it passes it along to another function to see whether that Legislation has a ShortTitle. If it does, then it formats it into a properly worded string and includes it as the Legislation's first Provision, then saves the changes to db.
Issue: The problem is, I've tried coding it in different ways, I keep getting a NullReferenceException, telling me to create a new object instance with the "new" keyword, and points me to the savedLegislation.Provisions.Add(provision); line in my second function.
Here are the two functions at issue, this first one saves the Legislation proper:
public Legislation Save(NewLegislationView legislation)
{
Legislation newLegislation = new Legislation();
// Simple transfers
newLegislation.ShortTile = legislation.ShortTile;
newLegislation.LongTitle = legislation.LongTitle;
newLegislation.BillType = legislation.BillType;
newLegislation.OriginatingChamber = legislation.OriginatingChamber;
newLegislation.Preamble = legislation.Preamble;
// More complicated properties
newLegislation.Stage = 1;
this.NumberBill(newLegislation); // Provides bill number
newLegislation.Parliament = db.LegislativeSessions.First(p => p.Ending >= DateTime.Today);
newLegislation.Sponsor = db.Members.Single(m => m.Username == HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name);
// And save
db.Legislations.Add(newLegislation);
db.SaveChanges();
// Check for Short titles
this.IncludeShortTitle(newLegislation);
// return the saved legislation
return newLegislation;
}
And the second function which is invoked by the first one deals with checking whether ShortTitle is not empty and create a Provision that is related to that Legislation, then save changes.
public void IncludeShortTitle(Legislation legislation)
{
var savedLegislation = db.Legislations.Find(legislation.LegislationID);
if (savedLegislation.ShortTile.Any() && savedLegislation.ShortTile.ToString().Length >= 5)
{
string shortTitle = "This Act may be cited as the <i>" + savedLegislation.ShortTile.ToString() + "</i>.";
var provision = new Provision()
{
Article = Numbers.CountOrNull(savedLegislation.Provisions) + 1,
Proponent = savedLegislation.Sponsor,
Text = shortTitle
};
savedLegislation.Provisions.Add(provision);
db.SaveChanges();
}
}
I've been researching how SaveChanges() works and whether it is properly returning the updated entity, it does (since I get no issue looking it up in the second function). If it works properly, and the legislation is found and the provision is newly created in the second function, I don't see what is the "null" reference it keeps spitting out.

Answer 1

The null reference in this case would be savedLegislation.Provisions. The Provisions collection won't be initialized to a new List<Provision> when EF returns your Legislation instance from the db.Legislations.Find(...) method.
The first thing I'd try is something like this:
var savedLegislation = db.Legislations
.Include("Provisions")
.First(l => l.LegislationID == legislation.LegislationID);
... but I'd also consider just using the legislation instance that was passed into the method rather than fetching it from the database again.