How to establish one-to-many relationship for a code-first approach? - sql

Question

I'm trying to build a recipe app for my spouse. I'm trying to set it up so she can add new recipes to the database as the app grows.
When adding new recipe, she will have three drop-down to pick from to construct her new recipe ingredients. First one will contain a list of ingredients that she can choose from, the second one a list of measuring units and the third one a list of quantities.
Here is what I got so far. Am I heading in the right direction or am I off? I'm using Entity Framework with a code-first approach:
public class Recipes
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
public string Description { get; set; }
public string Image { get; set; }
}
public class Units model
{
[Key]
public int Id { get; set; }
public string UnitName { get; set; }
}
public class UnitQty
{
[Key]
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
}
public class IngredientsModel
{
[Key]
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
}
public class RecipeIngredients
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public int RecipesId { get; set; }
[ForeignKey("RecipesId")]
public Recipes Recipes { get; set; }
public int IngredientsModelId { get; set; }
[ForeignKey("IngredientsModelId")]
public IngredientsModel IngredientsModel { get; set; }
public int UnitQtyId { get; set; }
[ForeignKey("UnitQtyId")]
public UnitQty UnitQty { get; set; }
public int UnitsModelId { get; set; }
[ForeignKey("UnitsModelId")]
public UnitsModel UnitsModel { get; set; }
}
After creating the table, controller and the views, this is what I get in the recipe ingredients index view.
Any suggestion will be more than welcome please and thank you
RecipeIngredient class's view

Answer 1

First of all. You are over engineering your domain model. On relational databases Join is bottleneck you should prevent from joins if it doesn't helps you.
public class Recipt
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
public string Description { get; set; }
public string Image { get; set; }
public ICollection<RecipeIngredient> Ingredients { get; set; }
}
public class IngredientModel
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
public IngredientUnit UnitType { get; set; } // Unit model is best to be added here. if it doesn't change in a single IngredientModel.
}
public class RecipeIngredient
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public int UnitQuantiy { get; set; } // No need to more classes.
public IngredientModel Model { get; set; }
public Recipt Recipt { get; set; }
}
public Enum IngredientUnitType // Same Unit Model but less database relation as its small finite collection.
{
Killogram,
Count,
....
}
and according to the Microsoft documents its best to use fluentApi configuration for the relations.
Override this method in your Context:
protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder builder)
{
builder.Entity<Recipt>.HasMany(P => P.Ingredients).WithOne(P => P.Recipt);
builder.Entity<RecipeIngredient>.HasOne(P => P.Model);
// There is no need to explicit foreign key definition. but you can explicitly define your foreign keys.
}
And for the last part. in Views you can use extra models called ViewModels.
As above domain turned to a minimal domain you just need to pass a list of IngredientModels to your view to complete your View.