We've started using EF6 as part of rewriting our application suite. There are many perfectly reasonable tables in the existing suite and we're reusing them using a database-first approach. My problem is that EF6 seems to be enforcing what I think are code-first conventions on my database-first model.
Consider this minimal example with two tables defined thusly and appropriately populated with a few rows:
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Table1] (
[Id] INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
[Table2Reference] INT NOT NULL REFERENCES [dbo].[Table2](Id) )
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Table2] (
[Id] INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
[SomeColumn] NVARCHAR(25) )
After running Update Model From Database we get this model:
(Oops. Not enough reputation to post images. It's what you would imagine.)
So far so good, but when you write code to access the Table1 entity, like so...
var q = _context.Table1.ToList();
foreach (var item in q)
Debug.WriteLine("{0}", item.Table2Reference);
... it compiles fine but will throw on the ToList() line. This is because the SQL generated contains a request for a column that doesn't even exist:
SELECT
[Extent1].[Id] AS [Id],
[Extent1].[Table2Reference] AS [Table2Reference],
[Extent1].[Table2_Id] AS [Table2_Id] <-- this one doesn't exist
FROM [dbo].[Table1] AS [Extent1]
I gather this has something to do with a code-first naming convention for foreign keys. I know I can rename Table2's Id column to Table2Id and rename Table2Reference to Table2Id and it will work. However, this is supposed to be database-first. Is there some way to tell EF to get out of the way and just go with what is actually in the pre-defined database? I did discover early on that I had to turn off the name pluralizing convention, but I can't seem to identify a convention to turn off that fixes this problem. I tried removing these:
modelBuilder.Conventions.Remove<PrimaryKeyNameForeignKeyDiscoveryConvention>();
modelBuilder.Conventions.Remove<TypeNameForeignKeyDiscoveryConvention>();
modelBuilder.Conventions.Remove<NavigationPropertyNameForeignKeyDiscoveryConvention>();
Anyway, I'm stumped. Is there an easy workaround that doesn't involve modifying the existing database?
Thanks for reading.
You can use data annotations attributes or fluent API to configure EF mapping to actual database tables. Here is how it can be done with attributes:
[Table("Table1")]
public class Table1
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public int Table2Reference { get; set; }
[ForeignKey("Table2Reference")]
public Table2 Table2 { get; set; }
}
It turns out that there is a very important piece to a database-first approach besides having an EDMX file. That is, your connection string must contain the following section:
metadata=res:///IPE.csdl|res:///IPE.ssdl|res://*/IPE.msl; (replacing IPE with the base name of your EDMX)
Otherwise, EF will be unable to locate the EDMX information in the assembly and code-first conventions can come into play. Mostly things just work, until they don't.
Related
I'm having a hard time finding the exact answer to this question, so my apologies if this is redundant.
So I have 3 tables defined such that:
Person :PersonId, FirstName, LastName
Company: CompanyId, CompanyName
Order: OrderId, PersonId, CompanyId
On the Order table, there is a foreign key defined on the PersonId and CompanyId columns, thus, my Order entity class generated by EF has a navigation properties of type Person (not PersonId) and Company.
So, to insert into the Order table, I first need to query the person and company tables to get the person and company entities. Then I can construct the Order object using the Person and Company entities and save it to the db.
In my scenario, I am being passed a PersonId and CompanyId.
In classic SQL I would just do INSERT INTO Order Set (CompanyId, PersonId) - 1 database call. But with EF, I have to do 3 db calls. This seems like overkill.
Is there any way around this?
PS - I'm using EF 6. I know I could generate an expression and make it single call..but that would still yield two subselects.
You can just include foreign key properties in addition to the navigation properties and then set them using the ids you have. If you do this will not have to go to the database to get related entities for just a sake of setting the relationship.
Is there a way to have entity framework use a SQL default value on an insert and yet allow updating to the field. We have an instance where a SQL table has an identity column "id" and another column which is set to ident_current("table"). The only way that I know of to get the field inserted with the default value is to set the field as DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Computed) so that it is ignored on the insert. However by having that attribute then we cannot perform an update to the column. Also it's a self referencing foreign key so we can't do an insert then immediate update to get around the issue. Don't ask me why the table is designed this way - just the way it was set up before so we're kind of stuck with it for now. A simple diagram of our setup is below:
DomainClass:
Class1 {
public int id {get;set;}
[DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Computed)]
public int id2 {get;set;}
public string Name {get;set;}
}
SQL (pseudo):
Table (
id INT which is an identity(1,1) column,
id2 INT NOT NULL with a default value of ident_current("table")
Name nvarchar(50)
)
We would want the insert statement generated by EF to be:
INSERT INTO Table(Name) VALUES('Name')
and the update to be:
UPDATE table
SET id2 = *somenumber*, name = 'Name'
Thanks a lot for all the help. We are using EF 4.3.1.0 if that's needed as well.
There is no way AFAIK. See this and that.
The first link points to a suggestion about using sequences as primary keys, which seems like something you might want to do instead given your example code.
The second link points to a suggestion about generic handling of default values, which is currently not supported either, but would be another potential starting point toward adding support for what you need.
data (table name)
dataid PK,
value1,
value2,
value3
data_address (table name)
dataaddressid PK,
dataid - id to errenddataid,
addressid1 - id to en addressid,
addressid2 - id to en addressid,
type
address (table namne)
addressid PK - id to addressid1 or addressid2,
address1,
address2,
name,
zipcode,
city
I have a really hard time trying to map this relations using Entity Framework 5, if some one have an idea or good links I would much appreciate that!
If you are certain that the database's integrity is sound you could just map the tables and create the associations manually in the EF model.
In a database-first mode I fiddled a bit with a simple data model: Parent + Child without FK. The tables were of course imported without association between them. Then I did "Add Association..." on the Parent, like so:
Note: no foreign key property yet. I added it manually in the properties of the association:
And I could run a linq query on Parent.Children.
I think this is the easiest way for you. The edmx design surface gives you some guidance to see which associations you created. You can always add a code generation item to generate a DbContext which is easiser to work with than the default ObjectContext.
I have to create an entity framework model for a badly designed database. The database uses table per type inheritance but it does so with using a PK->FK relationship, not a PK->PK relationship. E.g.
Person
PersonID (PK)
Name
Employee
EmployeeID (PK)
PersonID (FK)
DateStarted
HourlyEmployee
HourlyEmployeeID (PK)
EmployeeID (FK)
HourlyRate
Obviously this is just badly designed, but I can't change it. Table per type inheritance in the entity framework essentially wants EmployeeID not to exist and the PK for Employee to be PersonID. Is it possible to create a model for this database, or do I choose another tool? any recommendations?
You will not map this as TPT inheritance because your database is configured in the way that doesn't allow you cheating EF.
If Employee.EmployeeID is auto-generated in the database and Employee.PersonID is unique (uniqueness must be enforced in the database) you should be able (not tested) to cheat EF by simply mapping:
public Employee : Person {
public DateTime DateStarted { get; set; }
}
This class will tell EF that Employee inherits key from Person (PersonID) and you will hide the real key from EF - this should work if the real key is auto-generated.
The problem is your next level of inheritance which breaks this pattern. To make this work your HourlyEmployee will have to reference PersonID - not EmployeeID. EF now doesn't know about EmployeeID existence so it even cannot map relation with HourlyEmployee.
TPT inheritance in code first has one additional limitation - PK column must have the same name in all tables.
You can create a model from the database if it exists but it might not be what you expect. EF sometimes doesn't work that great with weird database structures.
Using Entity Framework 4.3.1 CodeFirst and having no luck getting the migrations or scripts to respect the schema that I want my tables to end up in.
It seems the default behavior (the one that I'm seeing regardless of what I do) is to omit the schema completely from the SQL that actually runs causes tables to be created in the default schema for the user running the migration or script.
My DBAs are telling me that they cannot change my default schema due to the fact that I'm part of an AD group and not a local user, so changing the default schema for the user running (an often recommended workaround) the script is not an option at all.
I've tried using the annotations like this:
[Table("MyTable", Schema = "dbo")]
public class MyTable
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public string MyProp1 { get; set; }
public string MyProp2 { get; set; }
}
And I've also tried using the fluent variant of the same thing:
modelBuilder.Entity<YourType>().ToTable("MyTable", "dbo");
The resultant script (and migrations) ignore the fact that I tried to specify a schema. The script looks like this:
CREATE TABLE [MyTable] (
[Id] [int] NOT NULL IDENTITY,
[MyProp1] [nvarchar](max),
[MyProp2] [nvarchar](max),
CONSTRAINT [PK_MyTable] PRIMARY KEY ([Id])
)
When there should be a [dbo] tucked in there like this:
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[MyTable] (
[Id] [int] NOT NULL IDENTITY,
[MyProp1] [nvarchar](max),
[MyProp2] [nvarchar](max),
CONSTRAINT [PK_MyTable] PRIMARY KEY ([Id])
)
Has anyone else had luck in getting Entity Framework to respect the schema? This behavior pretty much kills our ability to use codefirst at all in our enterprise environment.
Reminder: Changing my user to have a different default schema is not an option at all.
As my comment seems to have answered the quandary, I am recreating it as an answer.
It seems that because the SQL Server provider uses "dbo" as the default schema, it will not explicitly add "dbo" to the TSQL that creates the tables even if you specify that in your configuration.
This answers the basic problem. But now I am curious if dbo is the default, do you (Bob) still have a reason to specify it? It doesn't hurt to have it in the configuration if you just want the default to be obvious to someone reading the code. But is the behavior creating another side-effect?
ADDED: Aha! FIXED IN EF5! :) (I just updated my test project to use EF5RC (against .NET 4.0) and I got "dbo" explicitly in the TSQL for create table.)
I tried all of the stuff that Bob Bland tried with a similar lack of success (I was also using Entity Framework 4.3.1 CodeFirst). Then I changed the generated migration to look like this and it worked. Maybe this will save somebody a few minutes of pain?
So my solution was to generate the migration as normal, then hack it by hand to include dbo. as shown below.
public override void Up()
{
CreateTable(
"dbo.UploadedFiles", // See? I have added dbo. to the front of my table name :-)
c => new
{
UploadedFileId = c.Guid(nullable: false, identity: true),
// other columns omitted for brevity...
FileData = c.Binary(),
})
.PrimaryKey(t => t.UploadedFileId);
}
and the Down bit looks like this
public override void Down()
{
DropTable("dbo.UploadedFiles"); // See? I have added dbo. to the front of my table name here too :-)
}