Add/Remove many to many associations in Entity Framework

Question

I have three tables in my sample database:

Users

• ID
• Username
• Password

Roles

• ID
• Name
• Description

UserRoles

• UserID
• RoleID

UserRoles is a lookup table to simulate a many to many relationship. Adding records to this table allows one to associate records in Users and Roles. My problem is that in Entity Framework it correctly interprets this as a many to many relationship and abstracts away that lookup table.

This works great most of the time, but I'm not sure what to do when I want to add/delete entries from that lookup table. I can delete roles or users but that actually deletes the objects not just their association with each other.

I do know of one option to add a dummy column to the UserRoles lookup table. That will force Entity Framework to turn the lookup table into a full-blown entity, allowing me to add and remove them as lone objects. But I have no need for a dummy column and this seems like a hack. I am looking for better suggestions.

Answer 1

It should look something like this:

To Remove Relationship

user.Roles.Remove(existingRoleEntity);

To Add Relationship

user.Roles.Add(existingRoleEntity);