SetExecutionStrategy to SqlAzureExecutionStrategy with DbMigrationsConfiguration? - entity-framework

I saw a post today about implementing SqlAzureExecutionStrategy:
http://romiller.com/tag/sqlazureexecutionstrategy/
However, all examples I can find of this use a Configuration that inherits from DbConfiguration. My project is using EF6 Code First Migrations, and the Configuration it created inherits from DbMigrationsConfiguration. This class doesn't contain a definition for SetExecutionStrategy, and I can find no examples that actually combine SqlAzureExecutionStrategy (or any SetExecutionStrategy) with DbMigrationsConfiguration.
Can this be done?

If anyone else comes across this question, this is what we figured out:
Create a custom class that inherits from DbConfiguration (which has SetExecutionStrategy):
public class DataContextConfiguration : DbConfiguration
{
public DataContextConfiguration()
{
SetExecutionStrategy("System.Data.SqlClient", () => new SqlAzureExecutionStrategy());
}
}
Then add this attribute to your DataContext, specifying that it is to use your custom class:
[DbConfigurationType(typeof(DataContextConfiguration))]
public class DataContext : DbContext, IDataContext
{
...
}

After more investigation, now I think the correct answer is that:
DbMigrationsConfiguration is completely separate and only configures the migration settings. That's why it doesn't inherit from or have the same options as DbConfiguration.
It is not loaded, and is irrelevant, for actual operation.
So you can (and should) declare a separate class based on DbConfiguration to configure the runtime behaviour.
I added some tracing and I saw that the first time you use a DatabaseContext in an application, it runs up the migration, and the migration configuration.
But, the first time the DatabaseContext is actually used (e.g. to load some data from the database) it will load your DbConfiguration class as well.
So I don't think there is any problem at all.

Related

Migrating from Unity, how to do Property or MethodInjection on all classes without registering them

Ok, lets first be clear that I know this is not correct way (use constructor injection). I do have a huge codebase to take care of and a refactoring is not an option right now.
I have a base class
public abstract class ServiceBase {
public IUnitOfWork UnitOfWork {get;set;}
}
and a lot of Concrete classes that are NOT registered in the contianer.
public class ServiceScript : ServiceBase {
}
How do I inject IUnitOfWork??
I have alot of this ServiceScript-classes that are not registred in the Container
but is using the AnyConcreteTypeNotAlreadyRegisteredSource in Autofac
In unity I did just mark my PropertyDependency with a [Dependency]-attribute and everything just works.
It looks like StructureMap has the same way of using attributes, but they don't have Prism/Xamarin-support, like Autofac has.
This same problem can be applied to a ControllerX : ControllerBase in asp.net core.
I have tried to solve this with a RegistrationSource, but can't get it to work in the controller case that I tried first.
Any input??
/Peter

Am I properly creating my interface for a partial DbContext class in EF6?

I am utilizing ASP.NET WebAPI 2 & EF6 for a very small project which utilizes AutoFac to inject my DbContext directly into my controllers. I am not using a repository pattern as per Ryan's answer here: NOT using repository pattern, use the ORM as is (EF). To perform the injection, I went ahead and created an interface like so:
public interface IMoveGroupEntities : IDisposable
{
System.Data.Entity.DbSet<HostEntry> HostEntries { get; set; }
DbEntityEntry<TEntity> Entry<TEntity>(TEntity entity) where TEntity : class;
Task<int> SaveChangesAsync();
}
Then implemented the interface on a partial class which sits in conjunction with my generated entities like so:
public partial class MoveGroupEntities : IMoveGroupEntities
{
}
I have a sneaking suspicion I'm doing something incorrectly here as I feel like this line:
DbEntityEntry<TEntity> Entry<TEntity>(TEntity entity) where TEntity : class;
Shouldn't be needed, but it does appear to be necessary as "Entry" is used from within my scaffolded API controller.
Can anyone chime in here on a better way to achieve this?
The best you can say about scaffolded code is: it works. It's not the best code architecturally. I fully agree with the link you quote, but that doesn't mean that the controllers should be in touch with EF artifacts directly (including Entry).
I think it's a mistake to replace one DbSet wrapper (repository) by another wrapper. The gist of the answer is: use the context (and DbSets, etc.) directly in your code. That is: don't use wrappers. That is not: use contexts (etc.) anywhere. You're doing the exact opposite: you create a different type of wrapper in order to use EF anywhere. But it's a good thing that your gut feeling doesn't really like it.
I always prefer to keep action methods (MVC, Web API) small. Basically, I just make them call a service method. It's the service that deals with contexts and everything EF has to offer. These services may be in a separate assembly, but wherever they are, they are injected into the controllers by dependency injection and, likewise, they obtain their contexts by DI.

Workflow: Creating Dependency Chain with Service Locator Pattern

I'm trying to get dependencies set up correctly in my Workflow application. It seems the best way to do this is using the Service Locator pattern that is provided by Workflow's WorkflowExtensions.
My workflow uses two repositories: IAssetRepository and ISenderRepository. Both have implementations using Entity Framework: EFAssetRepository, and EFSenderRepository, but I'd like both to use the same DbContext.
I'm having trouble getting both to use the same DbContext. I'm used to using IoC for dependency injection, so I thought I'd have to inject the DbContext into the EF repositories via their constructor, but this seems like it would be mixing the service locator and IoC pattern, and I couldn't find an easy way to achieve it, so I don't think this is the way forward.
I guess I need to chain the service locator calls? So that the constructor of my EF repositories do something like this:
public class EFAssetRepository
{
private MyEntities entities;
public EFAssetRepository()
{
this.entities = ActivityContext.GetExtension<MyEntities>();
}
}
Obviously the above won't work because the reference to ActivityContext is made up.
How can I achieve some form of dependency chain using the service locator pattern provided for WF?
Thanks,
Nick
EDIT
I've posted a workaround for my issue below, but I'm still not happy with it. I want the code activity to be able to call metadata.Require<>(), because it should be ignorant of how extensions are loaded, it should just expect that they are. As it is, my metadata.Require<> call will stop the workflow because the extension appears to not be loaded.
It seems one way to do this is by implementing IWorkflowInstanceExtension on an extension class, to turn it into a sort of composite extension. Using this method, I can solve my problem thus:
public class UnitOfWorkExtension : IWorkflowInstanceExtension, IUnitOfWork
{
private MyEntities entities = new MyEntities();
IEnumerable<object> IWorkflowInstanceExtension.GetAdditionalExtensions()
{
return new object[] { new EFAssetRepository(this.entities), new EFSenderRepository(this.entities) };
}
void IWorkflowInstanceExtension.SetInstance(WorkflowInstanceProxy instance) { }
public void SaveChanges()
{
this.entities.SaveChanges();
}
}
The biggest downside to doing it this way is that you can't call metadata.RequireExtension<IAssetRepository>() or metadata.RequireExtension<ISenderRepository>() in the CacheMetadata method of a CodeActivity, which is common practice. Instead, you must call metadata.RequireExtension<IUnitOfWork>(), but it is still fine to do context.GetExtension<IAssetRepository>() in the Execute() method of the CodeActivity. I imagine this is because the CacheMetadata method is called before any workflow instances are created, and if no workflow instances are created, the extension factory won't have been called, and therefore the additional extensions won't have been loaded into the WorkflowInstanceExtensionManager, so essentially, it won't know about the additional extensions until a workflow instance is created.

How to make use of EF CodeFirst Migrations without hardcoding nameOrConnectionString

How can you make EF migrations work without hardcoding a nameorconnectionstring in the base of the required parameterless constructor?
EF migrations is forcing you to add a default constructor to the custom dbcontext. In the base of the dbcontext you have to provide a nameorconnectionstring.
public class CustomDbContext : DbContextBase
{
public CustomDbContext ()
: base("theconnectionstringwedontwanttoset") //hardcoded connection string
{
}
The fact that we need to hardcode the constructor is something we cant work with since in our client applications we work without a config file and we dynamically build up the connection since we are connecting to many different databases (server, local sql compact).
After exploring the DbMigrationsConfiguration class I found a DbConnectionsInfo property named TargetDatabase which can be set in the constructor. But even this solution did not work. This is what I did:
public sealed class Configuration : DbMigrationsConfiguration<CustomDbContext>
{
public Configuration()
{
AutomaticMigrationsEnabled = true;
//Setting the TargetDatabase in the hope it will use it in the migration
TargetDatabase = new DbConnectionInfo("Server=xxx;Database=xxx;Trusted_Connection=True", "System.Data.SqlClient");
}
public class MigrationInitializer : MigrateDatabaseToLatestVersion<CustomDbContext, Configuration>
{
}
I can see that eventually the Activator.CreateInstance is used within DbMigrator and I expected from this class to use the TargetDatabase.Create...or something.
Any help or feedback is welcome.
Thanks in advance,
Wilko
it is possible yes See answers here
I also included a test program in this question.

How to implement IDbContextFactory for use with Entity Framework data migrations

I am trying to use Entity Framework data migrations, as described in this post.
However, when I try to execute the Enable-Migrations step, I receive the following error in Package Manager Console:
The target context 'MyDataContext' is not constructible. Add a default constructor or provide an implementation of IDbContextFactory
So, I created a factory class that implements IDbContextFactory in the project that contains my DbContext class, but data migrations doesn't appear to recognize it.
Is there something that I should explicitly do to instruct data migrations to use this factory class?
I also hit this problem as i wrote my context to take a connection string name (and then used ninject to provide it).
The process you've gone through seems correct, here is a snippet of my class implementation if it's of any help:
public class MigrationsContextFactory : IDbContextFactory<MyContext>
{
public MyContext Create()
{
return new MyDBContext("connectionStringName");
}
}
That should be all you need.
Like #Soren pointed out, instead of using IDbContextFactory, not supported on some earlier EF Core releases (i.e. EF Core 2.1), we can implement IDesignTimeDbContextFactory<TContext>, which supports the missing ConnectionString parameter.
For a settings.json based aproach, which you can use with either of the referred interfaces, check #Arayn's sample which allows us to define "ConnectionStrings:DefaultConnection" value path
Update 1
According to #PaulWaldman's comment, on EF Core 5 support for IDbContextFactory was reintroduced. For further details, check his comment below.