EF Code First not generating table for ICollection

Question

I would like the below ICollection property in one of my data classes (let\'s call it \"Foo\")

public class Foo
{
    [Key]
    public int FooId { get; set;          


        

Answer 1

I know this is not best practice in all cases, but I think there are cases where storing a comma seperated list of your array in a column is a good way to solve this problem.

Conditions include:

• The list is not going to be long
• You don't need to search for entities based on the values in that list

It could also be a good idea if one entity has multiple string lists in it that would create lots of joins.

In those cases I would solve it by having two properties for the list. One being the comma seperated list used by EF and the other a list that you can use when accessing the items in the list like this:

[NotMapped]
public List AllowedBars { get; set; }

/// 

/// Comma seperated list of AllowedBars
/// 
public String AllowedBarsList
{
    get { return String.Join(",", AllowedBars); }
    set
    {
        if (String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(value))
        {
            AllowedBars.Clear();
        }
        else
        {
            AllowedBars = value.Split(',').ToList();
        }
    }
}

You need to initialise AllowedBars to be an empty list in the constructor.

You don't need to use the [NotMapped] attribute as this collection won't be used anyway, but I think it makes the intent clearer.