将ICollection与MVC和实体框架结合使用

Question

Hi I'm learning to use MVc using Code first method. I'm having trouble understanding the use of ICollection<> with my setup. I have two classes/entitys: 'Restaurant' & 'RestaurantReview' as below:

public class Restaurant
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string City { get; set; }
    public string Country { get; set; }
    public ICollection<RestaurantReview> Reviews { get; set; }
}

and.....

public class RestaurantReview
{
    public int Id { get; set; }    
    public int Rating { get; set; }
    public string Body { get; set; }
    public string ReviewerName { get; set; }
    public int RestaurantId { get; set; }


}

now whats confusing me is the last property of the Restaurant class. Why is it of type 'ICollection' and uses my RestaurantReview class as a parameter, what does it do, hope I have made myself clear

Answer 1

It's a definition of one to many relationship.

With that property (sometimes called Navigation Property ) Entity Framework will be able to connect Review with Restaurant it was written about. It will also allow you to get Review entities for given Restaurant entity really easily.

You can also remove public int RestaurantId { get; set; } public int RestaurantId { get; set; } public int RestaurantId { get; set; } from RestaurantReview class - That column is gonna be generated automatically by EF because of ICollection<RestaurantReview> in Restaurant class.