How to use the mapping table of a many to many relationship?

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.NET

entity-framework

C#7.1

I have currently two models I've created in Entity Framework Core 5 and a mapping table was created implicitly, unlike EFC 3.1 where we have to make a one-to-many table explicitly.

The tables are named Authors and Books, and between them AuthorBook was created with the ids, FK I believe.

Problem is I need to use AuthorBook in a AuthorBookViewModel as we know, it's already in the database.

What I have tried:

I've tried reverse engineering the database, as if I had created the mapping table using:

Scaffold-Dbcontext "Server=DESKTOP-3M9V0GN\SQLEXPRESS;Database=MagicLib;Trusted_Connection=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=True" Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer -Outputdir Models -Context TESTCONTEXT -Tables AuthorBook -dataannotations

Originally from:

How to Add An Existing Database Table to a Project with Entity Framework Core - ASP.NET Core - YouTube[^]

Also:

Working with an Existing Database | Entity Framework Core 101 [2 of 5] - YouTube[^]


The last one was more helpful for me personally.


The reverse engineering was a success, now it has some errors I could not figure out how to solve:

namespace MagicLib_Model.Models
{
    [Table("AuthorBook")]
    [Index(nameof(BooksBookId), Name = "IX_AuthorBook_BooksBook_Id")] // Errors: Error, Index is not an attribute class and namespace Name could not be found. 
    public partial class AuthorBook
    {
        [Key]
        [Column("AuthorsAuthor_Id")]
        public int AuthorsAuthorId { get; set; }
        [Key]
        [Column("BooksBook_Id")]
        public int BooksBookId { get; set; }
    }
}

If I comment out "Index" line I get a

System.InvalidOperationException: 'The entity type 'AuthorBook' has multiple properties with the [Key] attribute. Composite primary keys can only be set using 'HasKey' in 'OnModelCreating'.'

When I open Book View.

My idea was to go back and make myself my own mapping table instead of this hassle.

I know that would work.

How can I make it work, using EFC's code first approach many to many implicitly created table, being it in the db, and not in my Models?