Many-to-many insert using LINQ to SQL and ASP.Net MVC

Question

I have two Tables: Products(ProductID, ProductName) and Categories(CategoryID, CategoryName) with a many-to-many relationship between Products and Categories ProductsCategories(ProductID, CategoryID)

How Can I Implement a view that enables a user to Add and Edit one product with many categories using Asp.Net Mvc and LINQ to SQL?

Answer 1

Since LINQ to SQL only supports a strict 1:1 mapping with your database you would have to make a link table. This would look something like...

[ProductCategories]
ID
ProductID (FK)
CategoryID (FK)

Then for every relationship of product to categories you would just make a new ProductCategories entity and insert it. So given the data...

Products
ID Name
1 Apple
2 XBOX 360

Categories
ID Name
1 Produce
2 Electronics
3 Game Systems

Your link table would look like

ProductCategories
ID ProductID CategoryID
1 1 1
2 2 2
3 2 3

Answer 2

Take a look at this post