I have two entities from separate aggregate groups that have a many-to-many relationship:
public class ClientNotificationMethod
{
public int ID { get; private set; }
private ICollection<int> _personIDs;
//public virtual ICollection<Person> _contactPersonnel { get; set; } //AVOID THIS
}
The ClientNotificationMethod has a collection of Person IDs, and the Person has a collection of ClientNotificationMethod IDs:
public class Person
{
public int ID { get; private set; }
private ICollection<int> _clientNotificationMethodIDs;
//public virtual ICollection<ClientNotificationMethod> _clientNotificationMethods { get; set; } //AVOID THIS
}
From both classes, I commented-out the public virtual ICollection navigation properties, because I'm trying to follow the DDD principle of avoiding overlap between aggregate groups. I also want to prevent eager/lazy-loading lists of entire class objects (I only want the IDs).
When a Person is added/removed from a ClientNotificationMethod, I want EF to update the ICollection<int> properties in each class.
I haven't found any examples of this in my searches. So far, it seems that EF requires navigation properties in both classes to configure a many-to-many relationship. From my understanding of DDD, navigation properties should only be used in this way when the many-to-many relationship is between two objects in the same aggregate group.
Is the many-to-many relationship that I'm aiming for configurable in EF using fluent API?
At one point, I tried configuring a HasMany-WithMany relationship like this:
private void ConfigureClientNotificationMethod(EntityTypeBuilder<ClientNotificationMethod> builder)
{
builder.ToTable("ClientNotificationMethod");
builder.HasKey("ID");
builder.Property("ID")
.IsRequired();
builder.HasMany<Person>().WithMany().UsingEntity<Dictionary<string, object>>("ClientNotificationMethodPersons",
c => c.HasOne<Person>().WithMany(),
c => c.HasOne<ClientNotificationMethod>().WithMany());
builder.Property("_personIDs").HasConversion(new JsonValueConverter<ICollection<int>>())
.HasColumnName("PersonIDs").IsRequired(false);
}
This created a join table, but EF couldn't populate it because I wasn't using any Person or ClientNotificationMethod navigation objects in the classes.
