Many to Many Relationship Objects in C#

Question

Hi there

I am using .NET 2.0. I have 2 objects one is: PhoneService and the other one is ChartOfAccount. The relationship between this to is many to many.

public class PhoneService
{
    private List<ChartAccount> chartAccounts
    private ChartAccount chartAccount

    public Int64 ID
    {
     get { return id; }
     set { id = value; }
    }

    public bool Add()
    { ... }

    public bool Update()
    { ... }
}

public class ChartAccount
{
    public Int64 ID
    {
     get { return id; }
     set { id = value; }
    }

    public bool Add()
    { ... }

    public bool Update()
    { ... }

    public bool Allocate()
    {
       // this will save data for the bridge table only
    }
}

Now my question, is it possible when you do this:

PhoneService service = new PhoneService();
service.ChartAccounts[0].ID = 5
service.ChartAccounts[1].ID = 10

Due to ChartAccounts is a collection, how do I attemp to put Allocate() so become like: service.ChartAccounts.Allocate()

All I can think of is putting the Allocate() method in Service class instead. Any ideas?

Thanks

Answer 1

Typically, many-to-many objects, as in Databases, should be objects by themselves.

Why not rather use a third object to represent the many-to-many links, instead of in the objects?

Answer 2

While this may not be the cleanest way , you could always just create a ChartAccounts class that only contains a list of chartaccounts and add the method to that class. The other option is to create a extension method on the chatAccount class to perform the allocate code.