Error: the entity type requires a primary key

Question

I would like to expand the question asked on this thread

Binding listbox to observablecollection

by giving it an ability to persistent the data. The structur

Answer 1

Yet another reason may be that your entity class has several properties named somhow /.*id/i - so ending with ID case insensitive AND elementary type AND there is no [Key] attribute.

EF will namely try to figure out the PK by itself by looking for elementary typed properties ending in ID.

See my case:

public class MyTest, IMustHaveTenant
{
  public long Id { get; set; }
  public int TenantId { get; set; }
  [MaxLength(32)]
  public virtual string Signum{ get; set; }
  public virtual string ID { get; set; }
  public virtual string ID_Other { get; set; }
}

don't ask - lecacy code. The Id was even inherited, so I could not use [Key] (just simplifying the code here)

But here EF is totally confused.

What helped was using modelbuilder this in DBContext class.

            modelBuilder.Entity<MyTest>(f =>
            {
                f.HasKey(e => e.Id);
                f.HasIndex(e => new { e.TenantId });
                f.HasIndex(e => new { e.TenantId, e.ID_Other });
            });

the index on PK is implicit.

Answer 2

The entity type 'DisplayFormatAttribute' requires a primary key to be defined.

In my case I figured out the problem was that I used properties like this:

public string LastName { get; set; }  //OK
public string Address { get; set; }   //OK 
public string State { get; set; }     //OK
public int? Zip { get; set; }         //OK
public EmailAddressAttribute Email { get; set; } // NOT OK
public PhoneAttribute PhoneNumber { get; set; }  // NOT OK

Not sure if there is a better way to solve it but I changed the Email and PhoneNumber attribute to a string. Problem solved.

Answer 3

Make sure you have the following condition:

1. Use [key] if your primary key name is not Id or ID.
2. Use the public keyword.
3. Primary key should have getter and setter.

Example:

public class MyEntity {
   [key]
   public Guid Id {get; set;}
}

Answer 4

I came here with similar error:

System.InvalidOperationException: 'The entity type 'MyType' requires a primary key to be defined.'

After reading answer by hvd, realized I had simply forgotten to make my key property 'public'. This..

namespace MyApp.Models.Schedule
{
    public class MyType
    {
        [Key]
        int Id { get; set; }

        // ...

Should be this..

namespace MyApp.Models.Schedule
{
    public class MyType
    {
        [Key]
        public int Id { get; set; }  // must be public!

        // ...

Answer 5

This exception message doesn't mean it requires a primary key to be defined in your database, it means it requires a primary key to be defined in your class.

Although you've attempted to do so:

private Guid _id;
[Key]
public Guid ID
{
    get { return _id; }
}

This has no effect, as Entity Framework ignores read-only properties. It has to: when it retrieves a Fruits record from the database, it constructs a Fruit object, and then calls the property setters for each mapped property. That's never going to work for read-only properties.

You need Entity Framework to be able to set the value of ID. This means the property needs to have a setter.