EF Code First在现有数据库上，一对多映射

Question

I have a database generated by application which I can't modify (I can add tables, views and such but I can't modify existing tables, add columns to them). I work on a web application which uses BreezeJS to allow the client-side part of the web app query for the data via OData protocol.

Measurement table has following structure:

MeasurementId INT
DeviceId INT FOREIGN KEY REFERENCES Devices (DeviceId)
Name VARCHAR,
PRIMARY KEY (MeasurementId)

What I need is to add nullable ParentId self referencing foreign key and because I can't modify existing tables, I've created new one, Measurement_Parent :

MeasurementId INT FOREIGN KEY REFERENCES Measurements (MeasurementId),
ParentId INT FOREIGN KEY REFERENCES Measurements (MeasurementId),
PRIMARY KEY (MeasurementId)

I have following entity:

public partial class Measurement
{
    public Measurement()
    {
        this.Children = new List<Measurement>();
    }

    public Int32 MeasurementId { get; set; }

    public virtual Measurement Parent { get; set; }

    public Int32 DeviceId { get; set; }

    public virtual Device Device { get; set; }

    public String Name { get; set; }

    public virtual ICollection<Measurement> Children { get; set; }
}

Now the tricky part. I've tried many different approaches to get this working but without success. Current EntityTypeConfiguration for my entity looks like this:

// Primary Key
this.HasKey(m => m.MeasurementId);

// Table & Column Mappings

this.Property(t => t.MeasurementId)
    .HasDatabaseGeneratedOption(DatabaseGeneratedOption.None);

// Table & Column Mappings
this.ToTable("Measurement");
this.Property(m => m.MeasurementId);
this.Property(m => m.DeviceId);
this.Property(m => m.Name);

// Relationships

// Each measurement references device performing the measurement.
this.HasRequired(d => d.Device)
    .WithMany(m => m.Measurements)
    .HasForeignKey(d => d.DeviceId);

// Each measurement can have optional parent.
this.HasOptional(measurement => measurement.Parent)
    .WithMany() // .WithMany(measurement => measurement.Children) ??
    .Map(m =>
    {
        m.MapKey("ParentId");
        m.ToTable("Measurement_Parent");
    });

Unfortunately this gives me weird error while loading my app:

Metadata query failed for: api/EDW/Metadata; The specified table 'Measurement_Parent' was not found in the model. Ensure that the table name has been correctly specified.

I have no idea why is this happening because the table is there. I tried mapping these two tables onto one entity (table splitting), but because the ParentId can be NULL and EF generated INNER JOIN instead of LEFT OUTER JOIN for this mapping, it didn't work because some rows in Measurement table were ommited as they didn't have any corresponding rows in Measurement_Parent .

Basically what I need is to have optional Parent property with reference to parent measurement and list of Children measurements.

Answer 1

What you need is entity splitting - splitting a single entity among two or more tables. This implicitly involves shared primary key - in this case, the shared key in the relationship table will be the child entities' ID. You do this by calling multiple Map methods, each with a call to EntityMappingConfiguration.Properties to define which properties should be included in that mapping fragment and a call to ToTable to set the table name.

modelBuilder.Entity<Measurement>()
    .HasKey( ke => ke.MeasurementId )
    .Map( emc =>
    {
        emc.Properties( pe => new { pe.MeasurementId, pe.Name, pe.DeviceId } );
        emc.ToTable( "Measurement" );
    } )
    .Map( emc =>
    {
        emc.Properties( pe => new { pe.MeasurementId, pe.ParentId } );
        // maybe name this MeasurementExtension?  This table could
        //  be used for any properties you wish to add to the Measurement entity
        emc.ToTable( "Measurement_Parent" );

        // for this example's clarity I've named the PK Child_MeasurementId
        //  but in real-world use I would name it MeasurementId
        emc.Property( pe => pe.MeasurementId ).HasColumnName( "Child_MeasurementId" );
        emc.Property( pe => pe.ParentId ).HasColumnName( "Parent_MeasurementId" );
    } );

modelBuilder.Entity<Measurement>()
    .HasOptional( npe => npe.Parent )
    .WithMany( npe => npe.Children )
    .HasForeignKey( fke => fke.ParentId );

Here's the result in the DB (note I did not set up a FK/nav prop for Device but you know how to do that):

Ideally, the Parent_MeasurementId field would be not null and the record would be deleted instead of setting that column to null if their is no parent, but that doesn't seem possible with entity splitting. In any case, this does exactly what you're looking for - extending an entity without modifying the initial underlying table.