Unexpected Behavior When Using Inheritance with Entity Framework Core and Lazy Loading in .NET 6
I'm confused about I'm trying to figure out Hey everyone, I'm running into an issue that's driving me crazy... I'm working on a project and hit a roadblock. I'm experiencing an unexpected behavior with inheritance in my Entity Framework Core setup. I have a base class `Animal` and two derived classes, `Dog` and `Cat`. I enabled lazy loading, but when I try to access my derived properties, they seem to return null even though they should be populated. Here’s a simplified version of my code: ```csharp public class Animal { public int Id { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } } public class Dog : Animal { public string Breed { get; set; } } public class Cat : Animal { public bool IsIndoor { get; set; } } public class AnimalContext : DbContext { public DbSet<Animal> Animals { get; set; } protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder) { modelBuilder.Entity<Animal>().ToTable("Animals"); modelBuilder.Entity<Dog>().ToTable("Dogs"); modelBuilder.Entity<Cat>().ToTable("Cats"); } } ``` I’m using EF Core version 6.0.0. When I retrieve a list of animals and try to access properties specific to `Dog` or `Cat`, they are null: ```csharp using (var context = new AnimalContext()) { var animals = context.Animals.ToList(); foreach (var animal in animals) { if (animal is Dog dog) { Console.WriteLine(dog.Breed); // Outputs null } else if (animal is Cat cat) { Console.WriteLine(cat.IsIndoor); // Outputs null } } } ``` I verified that the data is correctly populated in the database. I also tried disabling lazy loading, but that didn’t solve the issue. My `DbContext` is configured with lazy loading proxies, and I’ve added the necessary packages: `Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Proxies`. In my Startup.cs, I have: ```csharp services.AddDbContext<AnimalContext>(options => options.UseLazyLoadingProxies().UseSqlServer(connectionString)); ``` Can anyone help me understand why the derived properties are coming back as null? I'm at a loss here, and I need to ensure that my data is being loaded correctly. Any insights would be greatly appreciated! My development environment is Windows. Any ideas what could be causing this? I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. My development environment is Debian. I'm open to any suggestions. This is part of a larger mobile app I'm building. Any ideas how to fix this?