[RESOLVED] Entity Framework Code First Hierarchical Many To Many Relationship

[honeybee]

I don't know if this should go into the database development, but here it is:

I have a model which essentially is a many to many relationship of itself. Sort of like below:

class Item

int id;
string name;
IList<Item> ParentItems;

It's basically an item which could be linked to another item as either a parent or a child. So each item could have more than one parent items (shared item) or it could have more than one child items.

I tried creating a database out of this, but there's just a single Item table with an Item_ID property. Normally in a database, this type of a relationship would require two tables, one the Item table and the other a relationship table:

Item: ID, Name
ItemRelation: ItemID, ParentItemID

How do I change the model to create the above setup? At present no matter what I can only do a one to one mapping.

Edit: Found the solution. Here's my model which creates a many to many hierarchical relationship on the same table:

public class Item
{
    public virtual int id { get; set; }
    public virtual string name { get; set; }
    public virtual IList<Item> ParentItems { get; set; }
    public virtual IList<Item> ChildItems { get; set; }
}

.

[MattP]

Ouch, that's the kind of setup that gives me nightmares.

Please mark the thread as resolved so we know you've found your solution.