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Create code first, many to many, with additional fields in association table

Asked 2011-08-13T12:29:22.000
328

I have this scenario:

public class Member
{
    public int MemberID { get; set; }

    public string FirstName { get; set; }
    public string LastName { get; set; }

    public virtual ICollection<Comment> Comments { get; set; }
}

public class Comment
{
    public int CommentID { get; set; }
    public string Message { get; set; }

    public virtual ICollection<Member> Members { get; set; }
}

public class MemberComment
{
    public int MemberID { get; set; }
    public int CommentID { get; set; }
    public int Something { get; set; }
    public string SomethingElse { get; set; }
}

How do I configure my association with fluent API? Or is there a better way to create the association table?

c# entity-framework ef-code-first many-to-many
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2 Answers

570

It's not possible to create a many-to-many relationship with a customized join table. In a many-to-many relationship EF manages the join table internally and hidden. It's a table without an Entity class in your model. To work with such a join table with additional properties you will have to create actually two one-to-many relationships. It could look like this:

public class Member
{
    public int MemberID { get; set; }

    public string FirstName { get; set; }
    public string LastName { get; set; }

    public virtual ICollection<MemberComment> MemberComments { get; set; }
}

public class Comment
{
    public int CommentID { get; set; }
    public string Message { get; set; }

    public virtual ICollection<MemberComment> MemberComments { get; set; }
}

public class MemberComment
{
    [Key, Column(Order = 0)]
    public int MemberID { get; set; }
    [Key, Column(Order = 1)]
    public int CommentID { get; set; }

    public virtual Member Member { get; set; }
    public virtual Comment Comment { get; set; }

    public int Something { get; set; }
    public string SomethingElse { get; set; }
}

If you now want to find all comments of members with LastName = "Smith" for example you can write a query like this:

var commentsOfMembers = context.Members
    .Where(m => m.LastName == "Smith")
    .SelectMany(m => m.MemberComments.Select(mc => mc.Comment))
    .ToList();

... or ...

var commentsOfMembers = context.MemberComments
    .Where(mc => mc.Member.LastName == "Smith")
    .Select(mc => mc.Comment)
    .ToList();

Or to create a list of members with name "Smith" (we assume there is more than one) along with their comments you can use a projection:

var membersWithComments = context.Members
    .Where(m => m.LastName == "Smith")
    .Select(m => new
    {
        Member = m,
        Comments = m.Memb
answered 2011-08-13T21:28:22.770
105

I'll just post the code to do this using the fluent API mapping.

public class User {
    public int UserID { get; set; }
    public string Username { get; set; }
    public string Password { get; set; }

    public ICollection<UserEmail> UserEmails { get; set; }
}

public class Email {
    public int EmailID { get; set; }
    public string Address { get; set; }

    public ICollection<UserEmail> UserEmails { get; set; }
}

public class UserEmail {
    public int UserID { get; set; }
    public int EmailID { get; set; }
    public bool IsPrimary { get; set; }
}

On your DbContext derived class you could do this:

public class MyContext : DbContext {
    protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder builder) {
        // Primary keys
        builder.Entity<User>().HasKey(q => q.UserID);
        builder.Entity<Email>().HasKey(q => q.EmailID);
        builder.Entity<UserEmail>().HasKey(q => 
            new { 
                q.UserID, q.EmailID
            });

        // Relationships
        builder.Entity<UserEmail>()
            .HasRequired(t => t.Email)
            .WithMany(t => t.UserEmails)
            .HasForeignKey(t => t.EmailID)

        builder.Entity<UserEmail>()
            .HasRequired(t => t.User)
            .WithMany(t => t.UserEmails)
            .HasForeignKey(t => t.UserID)
    }
}

It has the same effect as the accepted answer, with a different approach, which is no better nor worse.

answered 2013-05-28T22:26:56.093

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