I am new to entity framework and I am trying to work with some data I have the 3 tables below: Problem is I have found out that many to many relationships aux tables are not abstracted into entity framework.
Problem:
I currently have users who can create Friends. If they create a friend entity frameworks will supposedly create the necessary entries into Users_Friends.
But! What if I have the user fill out a form to create a friend and the friend they created already exists in friends, so instead of duplicating the friend we simply just want to make an insert into Users_Friends.
In my mind I am stepping through this way:
- Grab Post Data
- If Friend PhoneNumber already exists they are duplicate. (no need to insert this friend)
- Grab this matched Friends Id
- Insert our current users id into Users_Friends as well as insert the matched Friend Id.
But entity doesn't give me access to the Users_Friends table.
I did find out through another post though that I can select all the friends associated with a friend by doing:
using (var db = new GameAlertDBEntities())
{
var user = db.Users.First(); // or any other query for user
var friends = user.Friends;
}
I cant figure out though how to insert just FriendId and UserId into Users_Friends.