EF codefirst relationships - asp.net

Question

Could someone show me how to create a relationship in my EF codefirst example - I want a relationship on the Products class that has a many relationship to the Product_Spec class so when I compile the code it will have relationships when the database is generated, and also a relationship for the Specification class related to the Product_Spec
Data Context class
classes:
namespace MvcApplication1.Models
{
public class Department
{
[Key]
public long Id { get; set; }
[Required(ErrorMessage="Please enter a name for the departments.")]
[DataType(DataType.Text)]
public string Name { get; set; }
[DataType(DataType.Text)]
[Required(ErrorMessage = "Please enter a valid url for the department.")]
public string Url { get; set; }
public virtual List<Product> Products { get; set; }
}
public class Product
{
[Key]
public long Id { get; set; }
[ForeignKey("FK_Department_Id")]
public long DepartmentId { get; set; }
[DataType(DataType.Text)]
public string Title { get; set; }
[DataType(DataType.Currency)]
public decimal UnitPrice { get; set; }
[DataType(DataType.Currency)]
public decimal SellPrice { get; set; }
}
public class Product_Spec
{
[ForeignKey("FK_Spec_ProductId")]
public long ProductId { get; set; }
[ForeignKey("FK_Spec_SpecId")]
public long SpecId { get; set; }
}
public class Specification
{
[Key]
public long SpecId { get; set; }
[DataType(DataType.Text)]
[Required(ErrorMessage = "Please enter a product specification type.")]
public string Type { get; set; }
[DataType(DataType.Text)]
[Required(ErrorMessage = "Please enter a product specification value.")]
public string Value { get; set; }
}
}
namespace MvcApplication1
{
public class DataContext : DbContext
{
public DbSet<Department> Department { get; set; }
public DbSet<Product> Product { get; set; }
protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder)
{
modelBuilder.Entity<Department>().HasRequired(x => x.Products)
.WithMany().HasForeignKey(x => x.Id).WillCascadeOnDelete(true);
modelBuilder.Entity<Product>().HasOptional(x => x.Product_Specs)
.WithMany().HasForeignKey(x =>x.ProductId) // this lines doesn't work
base.OnModelCreating(modelBuilder);
}
}
}

Answer 1

I think you should set column names in ForeignKey attribute, not constraint names:
public class Product
{
[Key]
public long Id { get; set; }
public long DepartmentId { get; set; }
[DataType(DataType.Text)]
public string Title { get; set; }
[DataType(DataType.Currency)]
public decimal UnitPrice { get; set; }
[DataType(DataType.Currency)]
public decimal SellPrice { get; set; }
[ForeignKey("DepartmentId")]
public virtual Department Department { get; set; }
public ICollection<Product_Spec> ProductSpecs { get; set; }
}
public class Product_Spec
{
public long ProductId { get; set; }
public long SpecId { get; set; }
[ForeignKey("ProductId")]
public virtual Product Product {get; set;}
}

Answer 2

It looks like you're trying to create a Many-Many relationship between Products and Specifications. If that's the case, you don't need to define Product_Spec, using the default conventions, Entity Framework will create your required junction table for you provided you make some alterations to your entities (to define the relationship).
In your case, you could make the following alterations:
public class Product
{
// Your other code
// [ForeignKey("FK_Department_Id")] - Not required, EF will configure the key using conventions
public long DepartmentId { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<Specification> Specifications { get; set; } // Navigation property for one end for your Product *..* Specification relationship.
}
public class Specification
{
// Your other code
public virtual ICollection<Product> Products { get; set; }
}
When your tables are created, you should see a table with a name like SpecificationProducts, which is the junction table used to hold your many..many Product/Specification relationship.
If you needed to explicitly define this mapping (for example if you had an existing tables), you should be able to do something like this:
modelBuilder.Entity<Product>().
HasMany(s => s.Specifications).
WithMany(p => p.Products).
Map(
m =>
{
m.MapLeftKey("ProductId");
m.MapRightKey("SpecId");
m.ToTable("SpecificationProducts");
});