Question

First of all, I’m new to the EF-code first and .NET in general.

Im working on a mobile web app thats being built with MVC4, EF, JQuery, AutoMapper & other technologies and libraries.

This might be confusing, but I will do my best to explain it right.

I have the following pocos:

  public class Test
{
    [Key]
    public int TestId { get; set; }
    .
    .
    Other properties
    .
    .
    public virtual ICollection<Question> Questions { get; set; }
    public virtual ICollection<UserStatus> UserStatuses { get; set; }
}

public class UserStatus
{
    [Key]
    public int UserStatusId { get; set; }
    public int TestId { get; set; }
    public string Customer { get; set; }
    .
    .
    Other properties
    .
    .
}

public class Question
{
    [Key]
    public int QuestionId { get; set; }
    public int TestId { get; set; }
    .
    .
    Other properties
    .
    .
}

and in my context class i have:

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

    modelBuilder.Entity<Test>()
        .HasKey(a => new { a.TestId })
        .HasMany(s => s.Questions);
    modelBuilder.Entity<Test>()
        .HasKey(a => new { a.TestId })
        .HasMany(s => s.UserStatuses);          
}

The above Test object has a one-to-many relationship to Question and UserStatus objects through TestId. Each Test has it’s own set of questions which are 4 questions per test, and 20 userStatuses 5 per question).
As the name implies the UserStatus table has user statuses; it let me know which question(s) from what test was answered by a user.

The code in the controller:

var filtered = (from test in _ctxCmeContext.Test.Include("UserStatus").Include("Question")
                where test.Program == "SomeProgram" && test.IssueDate.Value.Year == year && test.IssueDate.Value.Month == monthNumber 
                orderby test.IssueDate descending 
                select new { test,
                                                 Questions = test.Questions, 
                         UserStatuses =     test.UserStatuses.Where(x => x.Customer == currentUserId) });

As you see I have an anonymous class so I can get the UserStatuses collection filtered by currentUserId to get the statuses for the current user only. Everything works fine at this point.

Here’s what I need to do:

Each question needs to know its own status, so it’s a one-to-one relationship between the Question and UserStatus table

In my context class I added the following:

      modelBuilder.Entity<Question>()
     .HasRequired(x => x.UStatus)
     .WithOptional();

and in the Question Object I had:

                        public virtual UserStatus UStatus { get; set; }

and I also modified my linq statement as follows:

          var filtered = (from test in         _ctxCmeContext.Test.Include("UserStatus").Include("Question").Include("UStatus")
                where test.Program == "SomeProgram" &&   test.IssueDate.Value.Year == year && test.IssueDate.Value.Month == monthNumber 
                orderby test.IssueDate descending 
                select new { test, 
                             QuestionStatus =    test.Questions.Select(u=>u.UStatus), 
                             Questions = test.Questions, 
                             UserStatuses = test.UserStatuses.Where(x => x.Customer == currentUserId) }); 

The result:

the UStatus property had data for each question but it wasn’t for the current user nor for the right test; it seemed to me that it just grabbed the first record it ecountered that had the same QuestionId from the Question table. No good.

so I changed the relationship to one-to-many:

In my context class I replaced:

    modelBuilder.Entity<Question>()
       .HasRequired(x => x.UStatus)
       .WithOptional();

with:

        modelBuilder.Entity<Question>()
           .HasKey(a => new { a.QuestionId })
           .HasMany(s => s.UStatus);

changed the UStatus property in the Question Object to:

   public virtual ICollection<UserStatus> UStatus { get; set; }

and removed the following from the linq statement

   QuestionStatus = test.Questions.Select(u=>u.UStatus), 

This time I was able to get some correct data but only for the first 4 questions, and the rest were null

I don’t know what to do anymore. Help me please.

Answer 1

In the Question object I created a navigation property back to the Test object, and from there I was able to know the status of each question because the UserStatus is a child collection in the Test object.