首先在EF代码中设计一对多关系的最佳实践

Question

Let say, I have two entites such as Student and Department . There is one to many relationship between them.

Student.cs

public class Student 
   {
      public int StudentId { get; set; }
      public int StudentName { get; set; }
      public int StudentRoll { get; set; }

      public int DepartmentId { get; set; }
      public Department Department { get; set; }
   }

Department.cs

 public class Department 
   {
      public int DepartmentId { get; set; }
      public int DepartmentName { get; set; }

      public ICollection<Student> Students { get; set; } 
   }

Instead of using public ICollection<Student> Students { get; set; } public ICollection<Student> Students { get; set; } public ICollection<Student> Students { get; set; } , I can use

public List<Student> Students { get; set; } 

public IEnumerable<Student> Students { get; set; } 

I saw it in various tutorial in Web. Which one should I use?? I know that it doesn't matter which one I am using but the result is always same. I want to know what is the best practice.

Answer 1

Not sure if its the "best practice", but I do it the way you've done it, but use virtual as well.

   public class Student 
   {
      public int StudentId { get; set; }
      public int StudentName { get; set; }
      public int StudentRoll { get; set; }

      public int DepartmentId { get; set; }
      public virtual Department Department { get; set; }
   }

   public class Department 
   {
      public int DepartmentId { get; set; }
      public int DepartmentName { get; set; }

      public virtual ICollection<Student> Students { get; set; } 
   }

I picked up this approach from Scott Gu blog . so I hope its good stuff

Answer 2

A good practice is:

public virtual IList<Student> Students { get; set; }

This allow you to use the methods implemented by IList and enable Entity Framework to create dynamic proxies at runtime.