Basically what I am trying to achieve is I have three tables, one parent will always have an entry in it and only one of the other two tables will be populated. The complexity that I am dealing with is that the primary key for the tables is the combination of two fields
ParentTable
-----------
UniqueID
OwnerID
[Some more fields]
ChildTable1
-----------
UniqueID
OwnerID
[Some more fields]
ChildTable2
-----------
UniqueID
OwnerID
[Some more fields]
I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how best to do this through EF Code First preferably using the Fluent API.
You just need to define that the primary keys are composite...
modelBuilder.Entity<Parent>().HasKey(p => new { p.UniqueID, p.OwnerID });
modelBuilder.Entity<Child1>().HasKey(c => new { c.UniqueID, c.OwnerID });
modelBuilder.Entity<Child2>().HasKey(c => new { c.UniqueID, c.OwnerID });
...and then define the two one-to-one relationships:
modelBuilder.Entity<Parent>()
.HasOptional(p => p.Child1)
.WithRequired(); // or .WithRequired(c => c.Parent)
modelBuilder.Entity<Parent>()
.HasOptional(p => p.Child2)
.WithRequired(); // or .WithRequired(c => c.Parent)
You cannot define a constraint though (except probably by defining a trigger in the database) that would ensure that a given parent may only refer to one of the two children, but not to both. You must handle this restriction in your application's business logic.