How do I remove underscore of foreign key fields in code first by convention

Question

I\'ve got multiple classes (including TPT) in my project. Each POCO has a BaseClass, which has a GUID (called GlobalKey) as primary ke

Answer 1

I finally found an answer for this, by writing a custom convention. This convention works in EF 6.0 RC1 (code from last week), so I think it's likely to continue to work after EF 6.0 is released.

With this approach, the standard EF conventions identify the independent associations (IAs), and then create the EdmProperty for the foreign key field. Then this convention comes along and renames the foreign key fields.

/// 

/// Provides a convention for fixing the independent association (IA) foreign key column names.
/// 
public class ForeignKeyNamingConvention : IStoreModelConvention
{

    public void Apply(AssociationType association, DbModel model)
    {
        // Identify a ForeignKey properties (including IAs)
        if (association.IsForeignKey)
        {
            // rename FK columns
            var constraint = association.Constraint;
            if (DoPropertiesHaveDefaultNames(constraint.FromProperties, constraint.ToRole.Name, constraint.ToProperties))
            {
                NormalizeForeignKeyProperties(constraint.FromProperties);
            }
            if (DoPropertiesHaveDefaultNames(constraint.ToProperties, constraint.FromRole.Name, constraint.FromProperties))
            {
                NormalizeForeignKeyProperties(constraint.ToProperties);
            }
        }
    }

    private bool DoPropertiesHaveDefaultNames(ReadOnlyMetadataCollection properties, string roleName, ReadOnlyMetadataCollection otherEndProperties)
    {
        if (properties.Count != otherEndProperties.Count)
        {
            return false;
        }

        for (int i = 0; i < properties.Count; ++i)
        {
            if (!properties[i].Name.EndsWith("_" + otherEndProperties[i].Name))
            {
                return false;
            }
        }
        return true;
    }

    private void NormalizeForeignKeyProperties(ReadOnlyMetadataCollection properties)
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < properties.Count; ++i)
        {
            string defaultPropertyName = properties[i].Name;
            int ichUnderscore = defaultPropertyName.IndexOf('_');
            if (ichUnderscore <= 0)
            {
                continue;
            }
            string navigationPropertyName = defaultPropertyName.Substring(0, ichUnderscore);
            string targetKey = defaultPropertyName.Substring(ichUnderscore + 1);

            string newPropertyName;
            if (targetKey.StartsWith(navigationPropertyName))
            {
                newPropertyName = targetKey;
            }
            else
            {
                newPropertyName = navigationPropertyName + targetKey;
            }
            properties[i].Name = newPropertyName;
        }
    }

}

Note that the Convention is added to your DbContext in your DbContext.OnModelCreating override, using:

modelBuilder.Conventions.Add(new ForeignKeyNamingConvention());