Question

I’m currently building an SPA with Web API and knockout etc. So far i worte my own simple datacontext and it worked pretty well.
The I bumped in to breeze and thought it might be worth a try. especially I hoped to get a simpler approach on navigation between the entities…

to load a entities or a single entity with breeze worked fine. Working with navigation properties seems not to work. The navigation property is always empty, even though it’s a one to many relationship.

Here is my model (simplified):

public class WorkdayHours
{
    public int Id { get; set; }

    public bool IsWorkDay { get; set; }
    ...
    public Byte WeekDay { get; set; }
}

public class Service
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string DisplayName { get; set; }
    public virtual ICollection<WorkdayHours> BookableDays { get; set; }
}
public class Employee
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string DisplayName { get; set; }
    public virtual ICollection<WorkdayHours> BookableDays { get; set; }
}
public class Shop
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string DisplayName { get; set; }
    public virtual ICollection<WorkdayHours> BookableDays { get; set; }
}

Then I fetch the entity service ind my SPA as follow:

var query = EntityQuery
            .from('Services')   
            .where('id', 'eq', serviceId)
            .expand('BookableDays'); 

As when teh query is executed I get as result the requested service entity with all the data except the bookableDay property is always an empty array.
When I check the Json answer I see that also the workdayHours are transmitted and breeze even calls my defined ctors for this entities. However they are not linked to the bookableDays property itself.

When checking the genrated DB model, EF generated foreignkeys for service, employee and shop in workdayHours as expected.

Is breeze not capable with having several optional foreignkeys?

Suggestion and ideas highly apprechiated.

Answer 1

Breeze is dependent on Foreign Keys. I had a similar problem. This should solve it:
EF was generating the ForeignKeys for me too and the related Entites where still empty. As far as i know breeze needs the explicit Annotation/Configuration of ForeignKey Fields.

public class Mvl
{
    [Key, DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
    public long MvlId{ get; set; }

    public DateTime CreatedAt { get; set; }

    [InverseProperty("Mvl")]
    public ICollection<MvlOP> MvlOps { get; set; }

    public DateTime? ReleasedAt { get; set; }
    public DateTime? LockedAt { get; set; }
    public DateTime? ClosedAt { get; set; }

    //[ConcurrencyCheck]
    //public int? RowVersion { get; set; }

    [Timestamp]
    public byte[] TimeStamp { get; set; }
}

public class MvlOP
{
    [Key, DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
    public long MvlOpId { get; set; }


    public long MvlId { get; set; }
    [ForeignKey("MvlId")]
    public Mvl Mvl { get; set; }

...
}