I want to use EF Core to map a legacy database. I cannot scaffold as there are hundreds of tables and I am only interested in very few. The situation is: I have a required many-to-one relationship linked by a column name that matches the name of the property that I want to give.

The code (simplified) is:

public class EntityProperty
{
    public ControlType ControlType { get; set; }
} 

public class ControlType
{
    public List<EntityProperty> Properties { get; set; } = new List<EntityProperty>();
}

The problem is, the foreign key column from the EntityProperties table to the ControlTypes is also called ControlType.

So, when I try to map it as:

builder.HasOne(x => x.ControlType)
       .WithMany(x => x.Properties)
       .IsRequired()
       .HasForeignKey("ControlType");

I get the following exception:

InvalidOperationException: The property or navigation ‘ControlType’ cannot be added to the ‘EntityProperty’ type because a property or navigation with the same name already exists on the ‘EntityProperty’ type.’

I guess it’s because I am adding a shadow property when a “physical” property already exists, but I what I really mean to say is to use a different column name to link the two entities.