Seed Code First Many-to-Many off of a Many-to-Many

Question

I am working with Entity Framework using the code-first approach. I have successfully seeded data for a many-to-many relationship (Type to Status). Now I need to seed data for a many-to-many relationship between Status and SubStatus.

I first create all the statuses, and then I add each Type and add the many-to-many relationship with each status.

Here is what I have for Type and Status:

    IList<Status> statuses = new List<Status>();

    statuses .Add(new Status() { Value = "On" });
    statuses .Add(new Status() { Value = "Off" });

    foreach (Status s in statuses)
    {
        context.Set<Status>().AddOrUpdate(s);
    }

    Type type1 = new Type()
    {
        Value = "Type 1",
        Status = new List<Status>()  
        {
            statuses.FirstOrDefault(e => e.Value == "On"),
            statuses.FirstOrDefault(e => e.Value == "Off")
        }
    };
    Type type2 = new Type() 
    { 
        Value = "Type 2", 
        Status = new List<Status>()  
        {
            statuses.FirstOrDefault(e => e.Value == "On"),
        }
    };

How can I build off of this to then add the many-to-many relationship between Status and SubStatus now?

Here's a list of a couple of SubStatuses:

  IList<SubStatus> subStatuses = new List<SubStatus>();
  subStatuses.Add(new SubStatus() { Value = "Success" });
  subStatuses.Add(new SubStatus() { Value = "Fail" });

   foreach (SubStatus s in subStatuses)
   {
       context.Set<SubStatus>().AddOrUpdate(s);
   }

Answer 1

I believe you are looking for a parent / child relationship? You could restructure your Status entity like this and remove the SubSatus class:

public class Type
{
     public string Value {get;set;}
     public ICollection<Status> Statuses {get;set;}
{

public class Status
{
      public string Value {get;set;}
      public int? ParentStatusId {get;set;}
      public Status ParentStatus {get;set;}
      public ICollection<Status> ChildStatuses {get;set;}
      Public ICollection<Type> Types {get;set;}

}

Then you can append ChildStatuses and associate them with a ParentStatus

var typeA = new Type()
            {
               Value = "Type A"
            };

var typeB = new Type()
            {
               Value = "Type B"
            };
var statuses = new List<Status>(){
                     new Status()
                     {
                         Value = "On",
                         ChildStatuses = new List<Status>(){
                                               new Status()
                                               {
                                                  Value = "Success",
                                                  Types = new List<Type>()
                                                          {
                                                            typeA,
                                                            typeB
                                                          }
                                               },
                                               new Status()
                                               {
                                                  Value = "Fail",
                                                  Types = new List<Type>()
                                                          {
                                                            typeB

                                                          }
                                               }
                     }
                   };


context.Set<Status>().AddOrUpdate(s => s.Value, statuses.ToArray() );