Entity Framework with Poco and navigation properties

Question

I am using Poco Generator with entity framework, And Poco Proxy class have been generated successfully,

For a single table all the things goes fine,

herein I've listed the main part of my classes and explain relations between tables. There are 3 table that they have many-to-many relation as follows:

1- Authority 2- Ability 3- AuthorityAbilityMap

Each Authority can have many Ability and vice verse. The main problem is that Navigation property in Authority Class doesn't work.

The Authority class is (just a part of class listed):

 public partial class Authority 
{
    .
    .
    .
    public virtual ICollection<AuthorityAbilityMap> AuthorityAbilityMaps
    {
        //Poco implementation 
    }
    private ICollection<AuthorityAbilityMap> _authorityAbilityMaps;
    .
    .
    .
}

And Ability class:

 public partial class Ability : IAuditable
{
   .
   .
   .      
    public virtual ICollection<AuthorityAbilityMap> AuthorityAbilityMaps
    {
        //Poco implementation contains get and set.
    }
    private ICollection<AuthorityAbilityMap> _authorityAbilityMaps;
}

And AuthorityAbilityMaps navigation properties:

 public virtual Ability Ability
    {
        get { return _ability; }
        set
        {
            if (!ReferenceEquals(_ability, value))
            {
                var previousValue = _ability;
                _ability = value;
                FixupAbility(previousValue);
            }
        }
    }
    private Ability _ability;
    public virtual Authority Authority
    {
        get { return _authority; }
        set
        {
            if (!ReferenceEquals(_authority, value))
            {
                var previousValue = _authority;
                _authority = value;
                FixupAuthority(previousValue);
            }
        }
    }

The source code tested against above classes is as following :

AuthorityEntities authorityContext = new AuthorityEntities();
                Authority authority = authorityContext.Authorities.Where(x => x.AID == 85).FirstOrDefault();
                ICollection<AuthorityAbilityMap> allMaped = authority.AuthorityAbilityMaps;

allMaped contains 0 member.

As you know the navigation properties will created by Poco Generator,

In fact I want to use these Navigation properties to load all relation-ed records and supply multiple Ability in bulk for a specific Authority.

Thanks in advance.

Your only problem description is "that Navigation property in Authority Class doesn't work". That's not very precise. What does "doesn't work" mean? — Slauma
Thanks!, allMaped does not have any member,Can I load all relation-ed Ability for each Authority and Save a collection of Ability for a specific Authority? — Aria
Yes. You don't need the many-to-many mapping entity. You can use collections between the two other entities. Just google for many-to-many examples. — Slauma

Aria Aria · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-11T07:31:50

I defined Authority's primary key and Ability's primary key as primary keys for AuthorityAbilityMap and it works well, they have been used as foreign keys in AuthorityAbilityMap.

Entity Framework with Poco and navigation properties

1 Answers