EFcore best practice

 

🌉 What is a Navigation Property?

Think of navigation properties as shortcuts or links between two related tables in Entity Framework.

It’s like saying:

“Hey EF… this row belongs to that row — help me jump between them automatically.”

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📌 Real-world example (your case)

You have:

1. TblUarRecord (Parent table)

Each UAR record can have many ReviewActions.

2. TblReviewAction (Child table)

Each ReviewAction belongs to one UAR record.

This is a one-to-many relationship.

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🔗 So navigation properties help you do things like:

Instead of writing SQL manually:

SELECT * FROM tbl_ReviewAction WHERE UARRecordId = 1

You can simply do:

var actions = uarRecord.ReviewActions;

Or:

var uar = reviewAction.UarRecord;

That's the beauty of navigation properties — EF handles relationships for you.

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🧩 How these properties look in your models

Parent Model (TblUarRecord)

public class TblUarRecord
{
    public int UARRecordId { get; set; }

    // Navigation → One record has many review actions
    public ICollection<TblReviewAction> ReviewActions { get; set; }
}

Child Model (TblReviewAction)

public class TblReviewAction
{
    public int ReviewActionId { get; set; }
    public int UARRecordId { get; set; }

    // Navigation → This action belongs to one UAR record
    public TblUarRecord UarRecord { get; set; }
}

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🤯 Why this is useful?

1. Auto-joins

EF Core automatically joins tables when needed.

2. You can load related data easily

var record = await _context.TblUarRecord
    .Include(r => r.ReviewActions)
    .FirstAsync(r => r.UARRecordId == 1);

3. Cascade operations

Delete a UARRecord → EF can delete its actions automatically (if enabled).

4. Cleaner code

You work with objects, not SQL.

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🎯 Quick Summary

Navigation Property = shortcut to related table

• Helps EF understand relationships

• Enables .Include(), lazy loading, etc.

• You can access related data easily

• Useful in parent–child tables (like yours)

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If you want, I can update your full models with proper navigation properties + foreign key attributes.