Question

Is it possible to map following POCO class with EF 4.0?

public class MyClass
{
  private string _myData;

  public MyClass() 
  { }

  public MyClass(string myData)
  {
    _myData = myData;
  }

  public string MyData
  {
    get
    {
      return _myData;
    }
  }
}

In NHibernate I think it is possible when I use Access attribute in mapping like:

<class name="MyClass" table="MyTable">
  <property name="MyData" access="field.camelcase-underscore" column="MyCol" type="string" length="50" />
</class>

I wonder if there is some Access equivalent in EF 4.0? Currently I’m able to map the class only if I add protected setter to the MyData property:

  public string MyData
  {
    get
    {
      return _myData;
    }
    protected set
    {
      _myData = value;
    }
  }

It works but for legacy classes it means update all properties which don’t have setter.

Edit:

I have updated the last code example because it also doesn’t work with private setter. Setter has to be at least protected. If the setter is private or doesn’t exists following exception is thrown:

System.InvalidOperationException:
Mapping and metadata information could
not be found for EntityType
‘MyNamespace.MyClass’.

Answer 1

I played with this little bit and my conclusion is:

• I can’t map legacy types which don’t have setter at all.
• I can map types which have private setter but I must set Setter accessibility in EDMX as well. It is not enough to define setter accessibily in POCO class – EDMX must know about it.