Scaffolding Not Detecting Complext Type Property in an Entity

Question

I am using MVC Scaffolding + EF6 in a Web applicatioon project in VS 2013.

Domain classes (Entites) and the context (DbContext) are in two separate projects referenced by the Web project.

I have a Patient class which has a complex property like follows.

public class Patient
{
    public int PatientId { get; set; }

    // Some properties

    // Complex property
    public MyComplexType Complex { get; set; }
}

public class MyComplexType
{
    public SomeType Property1 { get; set; }
    public SomeOtherType Property2 { get; set; }
}

Problem:

MVC scaffolding engine does not detect the complex property in Patient class and generated views don't contain fields to show or edit that property. I tried decorating MyComplexType class with ComplexType attribute but it didn't work.

What can be done?

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:26

According to this post and Julie Lerman's book Programming Entity Framework: Code First, complex types can only contain primitive properties.

Conventional Complex Type Rules

Complex types have no key property.
Complex types can only contain primitive properties.
When used as a property in another class, the property must represent a single instance. It cannot be a collection type.

In my case I am using an unconventional complex type so I should have decorated MyComplexType class with ComplexType attribute too.

public class Patient
{
    public int PatientId { get; set; }

    // Some properties

    // Complex property
    public MyComplexType Complex { get; set; }
}

[ComplexType]
public class MyComplexType
{
    public SomeType Property1 { get; set; }
    public SomeOtherType Property2 { get; set; }
}


public class SomeType
{
    // primitive  properties here
}

public class SomeOtherType 
{
    // primitive  properties here
}

HTH

Scaffolding Not Detecting Complext Type Property in an Entity

1 Answers1