ef core ignore navigation property

4
votes

I have an entity User that has two properties CreatedBy and UpdatedBy both referencing User. By default, EF assumes that these two as a one to one relation to each other. I get the following error message:

Message: System.InvalidOperationException : The child/dependent side could not be determined for the one-to-one relationship that was detected between 'User.CreatedBy' and 'User.UpdatedBy'. To identify the child/dependent side of the relationship, configure the foreign key property. If these navigations should not be part of the same relationship configure them without specifying the inverse. See http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=724062 for more details.

Currently, I have a class like this: 

public class User
{

    public int Id { get; set; }

    public int? CreatedById { get; set; }
    public User CreatedBy { get; set; }

    public int? UpdatedById { get; set; }
    public User UpdatedBy { get; set; }

}

Basically, here is what I am trying:

  • The created and updated would have no relation to each other (no navigation/inverse property needed)
  • Any number of users can have the same CreatedBy and any number of users can have the same UpdatedBy.

How can I ask EF to just ignore the navigation property? The main reason I have CreatedBy is so I can use Include(u => u.CreatedBy) later on. I know using IEnumerable<User> AllCreatedUsers property would solve this but I did not want to create an IEnumerable for each in my entity. Is there any way to do this with fluent API?

Here is what I tried:

modelBuilder.Entity<User>()
                .Property<IEnumerable<User>>("AllCreatedUsers");

modelBuilder.Entity<User>().HasOne(u => u.CreatedBy)
                                .WithMany(u => EF.Property<IEnumerable<User>>(u, "AllCreatedUsers"));
2
c#entity-framework-coreef-fluent-apief-core-2.0navigation-properties
try using ForeignKey data annotation on UpdatedBy and CreatedBy - vivek nuna
Why do you want EF to ignore a navigation property when you add it so you have a navigation property for EF? - Progman
@viveknuna yeah.. i had tried the ForeignKey in annotations and fluent API - Neville Nazerane
@Progman Considering I would never use such an IEnumerable, there is no point in having so many unused properties in a class. - Neville Nazerane
@viveknuna yep. tried again ForeignKey worked. Last time I may have used fk for only one property. using it for both worked. - Neville Nazerane

2 Answers

5
votes

You need to configure two Single Navigation Property relationships by using parameterless WithMany method overload:

modelBuilder.Entity<User>()
    .HasOne(u => u.CreatedBy)
    .WithMany();

modelBuilder.Entity<User>()
    .HasOne(u => u.UpdatedBy)
    .WithMany();
2
votes

You ForeignKey data annotation for both the properties.

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

    public int? CreatedById { get; set; }
    [ForeignKey("CreatedById")]
    public User CreatedBy { get; set; }

    public int? UpdatedById { get; set; }
    [ForeignKey("UpdatedById")]
    public User UpdatedBy { get; set; }
}