Question

I’m Using EF 4.1 Model First approach

Is it possible to have a foreign key relationship and a Navigation property at the same time for the same type.

For ex I have a Job entity and a field called PaymentType_ID with a foreign key relationship to a PaymentType entity. When I do an insert it works fine.

Then I add a Navigation property using the same association that is used for the FK, when I try insert I get the following error “Invalid column name 'PaymentType_PaymentTypeID'.”

It seems EF is for some reason adding another column by itself even though a FK already exists.

Is this possible or what am I doing something wrong

Answer 1

Yes it is possible but your property doesn’t follow default naming convention so you must manually pair the FK with navigation property for example through data annotations:

[ForeignKey("PaymentType_ID")] // Name of FK property
public virtual PaymentType PaymentType { get; set; }