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How to refer to the same class twice from one Entity Framework entity?

+1
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I have two classes, Contestant and Picture, with the following setup:

public class Contestant 
{
    ...
    public int AvatarID { get; set; }

    [ForeignKey(nameof(AvatarID))]
    public virtual Picture? Avatar { get; set; }

    public virtual ICollection<Picture>? Pictures { get; set; }
    ...
}

public class Picture
{
    ...
    public int ContestantID { get; set; }

    [ForeignKey(nameof(ContestantID))]
    public virtual Contestant? Contestant { get; set; }
    ...
}

Each contestant instance has a set of pictures and a single picture from the set that serves as their avatar.

The original setup (without AvatarID or Avatar relationship) worked fine. After adding the Avatar field and relationship, I get a run-time error message when I try to load either the Contestant set or Picture set. It reads:

System.InvalidOperationException: 'Unable to determine the relationship represented by navigation 'Contestant.Avatar' of type 'Picture.' Either manually configure the relationship, or ignore this property using the '[NotMapper]' attribute or by using 'EntityTypeBuilder.Ignore' in 'OnModelCreating'.'

From my research, this happens when a class refers to another class twice. The answers I saw all involved the same class having both keys of the relationship. For example, a Project class might have multiple employees assigned, one as ProjectEngineer the other as AssignedDeveloper. For those, defining the [ForeignKey()] in the same file worked. I do not know what I need to do, here or possibly in the DbContext's OnModelCreating method.

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1 answer

+1
−0

I tried to replicate your case and the only workable solution I could find is to use OnModelCreating configuration (fluent style) instead of attributes:

public class Contestant 
{
	public int Id { get; set; }

	public int AvatarID { get; set; }

	public virtual Picture? Avatar { get; set; }

	public virtual ICollection<Picture>? Pictures { get; set; }
}


public class Picture
{
	public int Id { get; set; }

	public int ContestantID { get; set; }

	public virtual Contestant? Contestant { get; set; }

	public virtual Contestant? ContestantInverse { get; set; }
}


modelBuilder.Entity<Contestant>()
	.HasOne(u => u.Avatar)
	.WithOne(r => r.Contestant)
	.HasForeignKey<Contestant>(u => u.AvatarID)
	.HasConstraintName("FK_Contestant_Avatar")
	.OnDelete(DeleteBehavior.Restrict);

modelBuilder.Entity<Picture>()
	.HasOne(d => d.ContestantInverse)
	.WithMany(p => p.Pictures)
	.HasConstraintName("FK_Picture_Contestant")
	.OnDelete(DeleteBehavior.Restrict);

The Picture needs two navigation properties related to Contestant since it has two relations with it (1:1 and n:1).

As a side note, while liking the attributes more, I decided to use the fluent syntax only because some configurations are not supported by the attributes (e.g. index on 2+ properties), and having the configuration split in two can lead to confusion.

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