c# - Many-to-many self referencing relationship

Question

I am new in EF. And I ran into a problem with creation many-to-many self referencing relation. I've tried to use solution from: Entity Framework Core: many-to-many relationship with same entity

my entities :

public class WordEntity
{
    public long Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Json { get; set; }

    public virtual List<WordSinonymEntity> Sinonyms { get; set; }
}


public class WordSinonymEntity
{
    public long WordId { get; set; }
    public virtual WordEntity Word { get; set; }

    public long SinonymId { get; set; }
    public virtual WordEntity Sinonym { get; set; }
}

and next configuration:

 modelBuilder.Entity<WordSinonymEntity>()
     .HasOne(pt => pt.Sinonym)
     .WithMany(p => p.Sinonyms)
     .HasForeignKey(pt => pt.SinonymId);

modelBuilder.Entity<WordSinonymEntity>()
    .HasOne(pt => pt.Word)
    .WithMany(t => t.Sinonyms)
    .HasForeignKey(pt => pt.WordId);`

but it leads to next exception.

System.InvalidOperationException: 'Cannot create a relationship between 'WordEntity.Sinonyms' and 'WordSinonymEntity.Word', because there already is a relationship between 'WordEntity.Sinonyms' and 'WordSinonymEntity.Sinonym'. Navigation properties can only participate in a single relationship.'

Does anyone can help me or may be suggest some examples to learn ? Thanks.

Answer 1

The post you are following is definitely wrong.

Every collection or reference navigation property can only be a part of a single relationship. While many to many relationship with explicit join entity is implemented with two one to many relationships. The join entity contains two reference navigation properties, but the main entity has only single collection navigation property, which has to be associated with one of them, but not with both.

One way to resolve the issue is to add a second collection navigation property:

public class WordEntity
{
    public long Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Json { get; set; }

    public virtual List<WordSinonymEntity> Sinonyms { get; set; }
    public virtual List<WordSinonymEntity> SinonymOf { get; set; } // <--
}

and specify the associations via fluent API:

modelBuilder.Entity<WordSinonymEntity>()
     .HasOne(pt => pt.Sinonym)
     .WithMany(p => p.SinonymOf) // <--
     .HasForeignKey(pt => pt.SinonymId)
     .OnDelete(DeleteBehavior.Restrict); // see the note at the end

modelBuilder.Entity<WordSinonymEntity>()
    .HasOne(pt => pt.Word)
    .WithMany(t => t.Sinonyms)
    .HasForeignKey(pt => pt.WordId); 

Another way is to leave the model as is, but map the WordSinonymEntity.Sinonym to unidirectional association (with refeference navigation property and no corresponding collection navigation property):

modelBuilder.Entity<WordSinonymEntity>()
     .HasOne(pt => pt.Sinonym)
     .WithMany() // <--
     .HasForeignKey(pt => pt.SinonymId)
     .OnDelete(DeleteBehavior.Restrict); // see the note at the end

modelBuilder.Entity<WordSinonymEntity>()
    .HasOne(pt => pt.Word)
    .WithMany(t => t.Sinonyms)
    .HasForeignKey(pt => pt.WordId); 

Just make sure that WithMany exactly matches the presence/absence of the corresponding navigation property.

Note that in both cases you have to turn the delete cascade off for at least one of the relationships and manually delete the related join entities before deleting the main entity, because self referencing relationships always introduce possible cycles or multiple cascade path issue, preventing the usage of cascade delete.