Entity Framework 5 - Insert data into UsersInRoles Many to Many table

Question

I have a scenario where I need to manually insert an User, Roles & UsersInRoles entries into a database without using the ASP.NET Membership. Now when I try to insert many to many relation UsersInRoles I get the following exception

Invalid column name 'Role_RoleId'.

I'm using EF 5, database first approach with POCOs. I have defined an association in the EDMX so that should be ok ... here are the model entities

/// <summary>
/// No Metadata Documentation available.
/// </summary>
[DataContract(IsReference = true)]
[KnownType(typeof(User))]
public partial class User  : IUser 
{
    #region Primitive Properties
    /// <summary>
    /// No Metadata Documentation available.
    /// </summary>
    [DataMember]    
    public virtual System.Guid ApplicationId
    {
        get;
        set;
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// No Metadata Documentation available.
    /// </summary>
    [DataMember]    
    public virtual System.Guid UserId
    {
        get;
        set;
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// No Metadata Documentation available.
    /// </summary>
    [DataMember]    
    public virtual string UserName
    {
        get;
        set;
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// No Metadata Documentation available.
    /// </summary>
    [DataMember]    
    public virtual bool IsAnonymous
    {
        get;
        set;
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// No Metadata Documentation available.
    /// </summary>
    [DataMember]    
    public virtual System.DateTime LastActivityDate
    {
        get;
        set;
    }

    #endregion

    #region Navigation Properties
    /// <summary>
    /// No Metadata Documentation available.
    /// </summary>
    [NotMapped]
    public virtual IMembership Membership
    {
        get { return _membership; }
        set
        {
            if (!ReferenceEquals(_membership, value))
            {
                var previousValue = _membership;
                _membership = value;
                FixupMembership(previousValue);
            }
        }
    }
    private IMembership _membership;
    /// <summary>
    /// Gets or sets the roles associated with an user
    /// </summary>   
    [DataMember]    
    public virtual ICollection<Role> Roles
    {
        get
        {
            if (_roles == null)
            {
                _roles = new FixupCollection<Role>();
            }
            return _roles;
        }
        set
        {
            _roles = value;
        }
    }
    private ICollection<Role> _roles;

    #endregion

    #region Association Fixup

    private void FixupMembership(IMembership previousValue)
    {
        if (previousValue != null && ReferenceEquals(previousValue.User, this))
        {
            previousValue.User = null;
        }

        if (Membership != null)
        {
            Membership.User = this;
        }
    }

    #endregion

}

Note: This is unidirectional relationship from Users to Roles

/// <summary>
/// No Metadata Documentation available.
/// </summary>
[DataContract]
[KnownType(typeof(Role))]
public partial class Role  : IRole 
{
    #region Primitive Properties
    /// <summary>
    /// No Metadata Documentation available.
    /// </summary>
    [DataMember]    
    public virtual System.Guid ApplicationId
    {
        get;
        set;
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// No Metadata Documentation available.
    /// </summary>
    [DataMember]    
    public virtual System.Guid RoleId
    {
        get;
        set;
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// No Metadata Documentation available.
    /// </summary>
    [DataMember]    
    public virtual string RoleName
    {
        get;
        set;
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// No Metadata Documentation available.
    /// </summary>
    [DataMember]    
    public virtual string Description
    {
        get;
        set;
    }

    #endregion      

}

Working code

MyContext context = new MyContext();

Role usersRole = new Role();
usersRole.RoleName = "Users";
usersRole.Description = "User Role";
usersRole.RoleId = GuidExtension.NewSequentialGuid();
usersRole.ApplicationId = application.Id;

//Init users
User adminUser = new User();
adminUser.UserName = "admin";
adminUser.IsAnonymous = false;
adminUser.LastActivityDate = DateTime.UtcNow;
adminUser.UserId = GuidExtension.NewSequentialGuid();
adminUser.ApplicationId = application.Id;
//Init user roles
adminUser.Roles.Add(usersRole);

context.User.Add(adminUser);
context.SaveChanges();

I have also tried adding the Role to a database first, then adding an User (without the added Role to Roles collection) and I get the same exception. Then I added model binding via Fluent API like this:

modelBuilder.Entity<User>()
              .HasMany(u => u.Roles)
              .WithMany()
              .Map(m =>
              {
                  m.MapLeftKey("UserId");
                  m.MapRightKey("RoleId");
                  m.ToTable("UsersInRoles");
              });

and I also tried to add binding like this:

modelBuilder.Entity<User>()
          .HasMany(u => u.Roles)
          .WithMany()
          .Map(m =>
          {
              m.MapLeftKey("UserId");
              m.MapRightKey("RoleId");
              var mapping = m.ToTable("UsersInRoles");
              mapping.MapLeftKey("UserId");
              mapping.MapRightKey("RoleId");
          });

Also here is the SQL Trace for the above code

exec sp_executesql N'insert [dbo].[Roles]([RoleId], [ApplicationId], [RoleName], [Description])
values (@0, @1, @2, @3)
',N'@0 uniqueidentifier,@1 uniqueidentifier,@2 nvarchar(max) ,@3 nvarchar(max) ',@0='46E39982-E490-4F79-B457-A1AB012948CE',@1='79D75E2D-9923-48DC-A4D6-AE0CED0EDD58',@2=N'Users',@3=N'User Role'

exec sp_executesql N'insert [dbo].[Users]([UserId], [ApplicationId], [UserName], [IsAnonymous], [LastActivityDate], [Role_RoleId])
values (@0, @1, @2, @3, @4, null)
',N'@0 uniqueidentifier,@1 uniqueidentifier,@2 nvarchar(max) ,@3 bit,@4 datetime2(7)',@0='B5EA5052-71C9-411E-91C7-A1AB012948CF',@1='79D75E2D-9923-48DC-A4D6-AE0CED0EDD58',@2=N'admin',@3=0,@4='2013-04-25 14:14:08.4930381'

Above you can see the source of the issue, the [Role_RoleId] column in User insert SQL so I'm not sure if I have setup navigation property correctly ?

No matter what I do I get the above exception like Fluent API bindings are just ignored. Does anyone know how to properly add many to many entries into a UsersInRoles table or what I'm missing in my code.

Note: I'm new to EF so any information can be helpful.

UPDATE I have tried to save only the User entry to a database and I get same [Role_RoleId] exception, hope this will clarify this issue a bit more, as maybe this isn't a many to many insert issue but rather invalid many to many configuration issue ?

Regards

Answer 1

I have found two issues in my code, after a long long code review, first issue was the property "hidden" in one of my partial classes called

public virtual ICollection<User> Members { get; set; }

It was there as a copy-paste error, I couldn't find it because it was in a collapsed region and I was looking for Users property as this was the name of the navigation item I generated earlier.

Second issue was a more serious one that slipped through, and it was related to "Database.SetInitializer", db initializer was put in

protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder)
{
  Database.SetInitializer<CoreDALContext>(null);
}

which is wrong and this should be called only once and put in static constructor as per Microsoft implementation.

static CoreDALContext()
{
  Database.SetInitializer<CoreDALContext>(null);
}

I hope this will help other EF newcomers not to make the same mistake I did.

Regards