CODEWITHSUNDEEP
entity-frameworkprimary-key
thecoop
thecoop

Reputation: 46118

EF entity without a public key

I want to create an entity in EF without a public key. The backing table has got a non-unique clustered key, but the data in the table conceptually doesn't have a unique primary key it can use.

It looks like EF really doesn't like this. Is there any way of getting EF to accept that the table has no primary key and make it work with it anyway, with no performance hit? I don't care if the result is read-only.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 360

Answers (2)

e36M3
e36M3

Reputation: 6022

You may also be able to accomplish this by exposing a view and then mapping your entity to the view.

Upvotes: 0

Steve Wilkes
Steve Wilkes

Reputation: 7135

As I understand it, as the Entity Framework is based on the Domain Driven Design concept of Entities, each Entity by definition must have a unique identifier. If the concept which the data in your table represents does not conceptually have a unique identifier then it is not an Entity, in the sense intended by the framework.

With this in mind I'd define a Stored Procedure, make it available through my object context, then make the objects encapsulating this data available via a class which lazy-loads the data, manually maps it into the objects you're using and presents it in a read-only manner.

Upvotes: 2

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