Entity Framework change column delete behaviour without losing data - entity-framework-core

Using Entity Framework's automatic migrations I wanted to change the onDelete behaviour of a column (a foreign key) but it dropped and created a new column with the same name, hence data in that column would be lost.
My goal is to change the onDelete behaviour of a column without loosing data.
Is there a method to change a column's onDelete behaviour similar to how RenameColumn can be used for changing column name without loosing data or any other ideas?
Thanks

Related

How to create relationships between entities with existing database that does not contain foreign keys

Using Entity Framework Core 2.0
Stuck with company's production database which has primary keys defined for each table but no foreign keys defined for any relationships.
Dependent records in the database have id fields which are intended to relate to the primary key fields of the parent record like you would normally find with a foreign key relationship/constraint. But these fields were all created as INT NOT NULL and are using a SQL default of '0'.
As a result dependent records have been inserted over time without requiring that a related parent record be specified.
Initially I defined my models in EF with integers and used a fluent configuration to specify "IsRequired". This was done so I could run migrations to create a test database for comparison against the production database to verify that my code first was correctly coded.
This then lead to the problem while using "Include" in my Linq queries which performs an inner join that results in dropping the records that contain the 0's in the id fields of the dependent record.
The only way that I have found to make this work is to model all of the id fields in the dependent entity as nullable integers and remove the "IsRequired" from the fluent configuration.
When using the "Include" it performs a left outer join keeping all of the dependent entities. This also means that any reference properties on the included entities are set to null instead of an empty string. This part can probably be fixed fairly easily.
The downside is if I wanted to use migrations to create a database now, all id fields in the dependent records would be created as NULL.
Is there anyone who has run up against this type of situation? Does anyone have any suggestions to try other than the approach I am using?
I haven't dealt with this scenario before but I wonder if you can solve it by defining the FK property as Nullable and then in the migrations, after the migration is created, edit it to add a HasDefaultValue property to ensure that it's 0? (doc for that migration method: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/ef/core/modeling/relational/default-values)

How to create RowVersion column for optimistic concurrency using model first approach?

I am working on a legacy web app which implements model first(edmx file) approach using Entity Framework.
I need to implement optimistic concurrency, so I have added this field as following:
and inside the database has been created as binary(8) type.
But when I try to update the entity is getting updated but the VersionRow values is not updated(no new value generated).
P.S
When I added the column I have binded default value as 0x0000000000000000 because it does not allow null values.
Yea I solved it this way:
1) I changed the type of RowVersion column from Binary(10) into timestamp inside SqlServer.
2) In the property details inside the .edmx file I have put the property StoreGeneratedPattern of the property RowVersion as Computed.
Computed it means that a new value is generated on insert and update.
Now it became as following:

EF code-first migration: SqlCeException altering NTEXT column

My application uses Entity Framework 5.0 code-first on top of a Sql CE database. Until now, we have used Automatic Migrations to manage entity mapping changes. However, I now have a change for which I need to create a custom migration to ensure no data is lost during the update. I made my changes to the entities, and used the Add-Migration command which generated Up() and Down() methods for me. I customized the Up() method to insert my custom sql to preserve the data, and tested my application.
When I run the application, I received the error:
Unable to update database to match the current model because there are pending changes and automatic migration is disabled. Either write the pending model changes to a code-based migration or enable automatic migration. Set DbMigrationsConfiguration.AutomaticMigrationsEnabled to true to enable automatic migration.
Ok, I don't understand this because all of my changes are detailed in the Up() method that got executed.
So I turn Automatic Migrations back on just to see what happens. Now I receive this error:
"Cannot alter column of type NTEXT or IMAGE [ Column Name = LastName ]"
This error comes from a table/entity that hasn't even been touched with my changes. The existing database has this string mapped to nvarchar(4000). If I examine the DB after I receive this exception, I observe that the columns have been changed to ntext. What is EF doing? Why is it touching tables that haven't been changed? How can I get more information on what is going on here?
Update:
As a workaround, I attempted to mark each and every string type in my entities with a data annotation as such:
[Column(TypeName = "ntext")]
public virtual string LastName
{
get;
set;
}
Now all of my strings are using ntext in the database. This leads to further exceptions when queries are performed:
The ntext and image data types cannot be used in WHERE, HAVING, GROUP BY, ON, or IN clauses, except when these data types are used with the LIKE or IS NULL predicates.
So, to summarize:
Turning off automatic migrations causes EF to detect phantom changes and throw exceptions
Turning on automatic migration in conjunction with a custom migration causes all existing strings to be mapped to ntext
strings mapped to ntext cannot be queried, effectively making them useless in my application
For me, a modification of an Up method worked out.
SerialNumber = c.String(maxLength: 99)
was applied instead of
SerialNumber = c.String()
i had the same issue and i fixed by editing the table column data type manually by opening SQl Server Compact/SQlite Toolbox explorer windows, and then expend the database name, then expend the table you want to edit and right click the column you want to edit, and click drop script, then run the scrip and the column will be dropped from the table, then right click the table and click add column and from here you can choose what data type you want and add the new column that way. I hope this helps some one.

EF CodeFirst: Rails-style created and modified columns

Using Entity Framework CodeFirst, how do I create a created datetime column that gets populated with the current timestamp everytime a record is inserted for that table, and a modified datetime column that has a timestamp generated evertime a row is updated? Rails does this by default and I was hoping the EF generated database would have this as well, but it doesn't. Is this something that can be done with data annotations? If so, how?
Thanks!
It is not supported in EF. EF will not create these columns for you automatically. You must do it yourselves by either:
Have Created and Modified properties in every entity where you want to maintain these values. You must also manually maintain these columns in your application (common approach is overriding SaveChanges and set values accordingly).
If you don't need these values mapped (you never expect to use them in your application and you are happy with the logic in the database) you can create custom database initializer which would execute your custom SQL to alter tables and add those columns, default constraints for Created columns and update triggers for Modified columns.

Entity Framework map multiple tables to one entity. Concurrency check

I got one entity mapped to two tables. First of this tables has timestamp field.
What I want - if I modify field from first table it should check first table for concurrecny with timestamp column. The second table should'n updating. If I modify second table it should just update the second table. First table must be unchanged.
This is work if I set "Concurrecny=None" for the timestamp field in schema.
If I set "Concurrecny=Fixed" for the timestamp field and change properties from the second table it update the first table with current values.
How to make Concurrency check only for one of this two tables?
That is not possible. Once you map two tables to single entity they becomes one for entity framework and the time stamp is shared among them so if you do any changes to the second EF will always modify timestamp in the first. If you set Concurrency to None you are turning off the concurrency feature in EF and the main purpose of timestamp field.