Entity Framework and Models with Simple Arrays

Question

This is my model class.

public class Lead
{
    private readonly ObservableCollection m_tags = new ObservableCollection();

    p         


        

Answer 1

Since your model has to be represented in a relational way, you can only use primitive types (that have an equivalent in a SQL DB) or other entities within a entity definition - that means the tags are represented by their own entity. In your case it would be something like this using Code first approach:

public class Lead
{
    public int LeadId { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public virtual ICollection Tags { get; set; }
}

public class Tag
{
    public int TagId { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

public class SomeContext : DbContext
{
    public DbSet Leads { get; set; }
    public DbSet Tags { get; set; }
}

This (by default) will be represented in the database as a table Leads, a table Tags, and a relationship table LeadTags that only contains {LeadId, TagId} pairs.