How to disable cascade delete for link tables in EF code-first?
.net, c#, database, ef-code-first, entity-framework
Solution
I got the answer. :-) Those cascade deletes were being created because of `ManyToManyCascadeDeleteConvention`. You need to remove this convention to prevent it from creating cascade deletes for link tables:
modelBuilder.Conventions.Remove<ManyToManyCascadeDeleteConvention>();
Problem
I want to disable cascade deletes for a link table with entity framework code-first. For example, if many users have many roles, and I try to delete a role, I want that delete to be blocked unless there are no users currently associated with that role. I already remove the cascade delete convention in my `OnModelCreating`: ``` protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder) { ... modelBuilder.Conventions.Remove<OneToManyCascadeDeleteConvention>(); ``` And then I set up the user-role link table: ``` modelBuilder.Entity<User>() .HasMany(usr => usr.Roles) .WithMany(role => role.Users) .Map(m => { m.ToTable("UsersRoles"); m.MapLeftKey("UserId"); m.MapRightKey("RoleId"); }); ``` Yet when EF creates the database, it creates a delete cascade for the foreign key relationships, eg. ``` ALTER TABLE [dbo].[UsersRoles] WITH CHECK ADD CONSTRAINT [FK_dbo.UsersRoles_dbo.User_UserId] FOREIGN KEY([UserId]) REFERENCES [dbo].[User] ([UserId]) ON DELETE CASCADE GO ALTER TABLE [dbo].[UsersRoles] WITH CHECK ADD CONSTRAINT [FK_dbo.UsersRoles_dbo.Role_RoleId] FOREIGN KEY([RoleId]) REFERENCES [dbo].[Role] ([RoleId]) ON DELETE CASCADE GO ``` How can I stop EF generating this delete cascade?