In EF 4.1 RC1, I have a simple entity like say Category, with a property ID int. Can I make that a read only property and still have it work?
If not, how do you protect the PK/FK?
One way is to define your ID property like this:
public int ID { get; internal set; }
... then define your DbContext class in the same assembly as the "Category" class. It'll have write access to the property, but classes outside of the assembly won't.
If you need to define your DbContext in a separate assembly, you can use the InternalsVisibleTo attribute to let that assembly see the internals of your "Category" class.
Related
I really want to be able to use NodaTime in my Entity Framework Code First database projects but haven't found a "clean" way to do it. What I really want to do is this:
public class Photoshoot
{
public Guid PhotoshootId{get; set;}
public LocalDate ShootDate{get; set;} //ef ignores this property
}
Is there any supported or recommended approach to using NodaTime with EF Code First?
Until custom primitive type persistence is natively supported in Entity Framework, a common work around is to use buddy properties.
For each custom primitive within your domain model, you create an associated mapped primitive to hold the value in a format supported by Entity Framework. The custom primitive properties are then calculated from the value of their corresponding buddy property.
For example:
public class Photoshoot
{
// mapped
public Guid PhotoshootId{get; set;}
// mapped buddy property to ShootDate
public DateTime ShootDateValue { get; set; }
// non-mapped domain properties
public LocalDate ShootDate
{
get { // calculate from buddy property }
set { // set the buddy property }
}
}
We use NodaTime in our code first POCO's using exactly this approach.
Obviously this leaves you with a single type acting as both a code first POCO and a domain type. This can be improved at the expense of complexity by separating out the different responsibilities into two types and mapping between them. A half-way alternative is to push the domain properties into a subtype and make all mapped buddy properties protected. With a certain amount of wanging Entity Framework can be made to map to protected properties.
This rather splendid blog post evaluates Entity Framework support for various domain modelling constructs including encapsulated primitives. This is where I initially found the concept of buddy properties when setting up our POCO's:
http://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2014/04/29/domain-modeling-with-entity-framework-scorecard/
A further blog post in that series discusses mapping to protected properties: http://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2014/05/09/missing-ef-feature-workarounds-encapsulated-collections/
EF Core 2.1 has a new feature Value Conversions, which is exactly for this scenario.
//OnModelCreating
builder.Entity<MyEntity>
.Property(e => e.SomeInstant)
.HasConversion(v => v.ToDateTimeOffset(), v => Instant.FromDateTimeOffset(v));
.HasConversion has some other overloads to make this logic re-useable, for example you can define your own ValueConverter.
No "clean" way that I'm aware of because EF, as of this writing, doesn't have a mechanism for simple type conversion like you see in NHibernate (IUserType). A real limitation in EF as an ORM which causes me to change my domain to suit my ORM.
There is a provider specific way that works with Postgres (Npgsql).
Install the library
dotnet add package Npgsql.EntityFrameworkCore.PostgreSQL.NodaTime
And then while configuring DbContext, use this,
services.AddDbContext<PhotoshootDbContext>(opt =>opt.UseNpgsql(Configuration.GetConnectionString("ConnectionString"), o => o.UseNodaTime()));
There are some third party libraries for other providers too.
As it says on the tin, is it possible to create an instance of a DbContext suitable for use as an Entity Framework 5.0 POCO context where the properies that are normally declared as
public DbSet<T> Entities { get; set; }
aren't set/known until runtime?
I'd like to make a repository that has methods like
public TEntity Find<TEntity>(object key) where TEntity : class
{
return _context.Set<TEntity>().Find(key);
}
public void Update<TEntity>(TEntity entity) where TEntity : class
{
if (_context.Entry(entity).State == EntityState.Detached) //entity is detached
_context.Set<TEntity>().Attach(entity);
_context.Entry(entity).State = EntityState.Modified;
}
.... etc
And then use them like:
Widget w = repository.Find<Widget>(123);
repository.SaveChanges();
This is trivial if the repository's context is set to a class that contains a DbSet<Widget> Widgets, but can it be done such that the entity types that I plan to use won't be know until runtime OR possibly not until I actually USE them? So that if I have a new class Foo, I can immediately query my repository to .Find<Foo>(123) without having to first add a DbSet<Foo> Foos to my DbContext class?
I think this should be possible because there's nothing special about the poco classes or the DbContext instance which holds references to them.
You don't need DbSet<Foo> Foos property in your context. That is just one way to tell context about existence of the Foo entity. There are multiple ways how context discovers mapped entities:
By explicit DbSet<T> properties
By navigation properties in already discovered entities
By specifying mapping in DbModelBuilder
Overriding OnModelCreated in your context type
Creating DbModelBuilder manually, building it and compiling it into DbCompiledModel which can be passed to DbContext constructor
By declaring EntityTypeConfiguration<T> for each entity and adding it to DbModelBuilder (either in OnModelCreated or in manually created DbModelBuilder).
The last option can be used to discover all required entities at application startup (for example by searching assemblies for all entity configuration classes and registering them to model builder) but it is still not fully dynamic solution. Compiled model is normally constructed only once per application run when the context is used for the first time. Without replacing the compiled model you cannot add or remove mapped entity types to the context.
Is it possible to have Code First data classes declared with internal access as shown:
internal class Person
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
}
I have a requirement that classes and its properties should not be visible outside of the assembly.
As long as your DbContext derived class that exposes your class to EF is in the same assembly, you should be able to. I don't happen to design my apps that way as I prefer more separation. But the context should be able to build the model and it should be able to interact with the classes (e.g. execute queries, save changes etc) if they are in the same assembly since it will have access to the internal class. Even with the various odd things we tried and wrote about in the Code First book, I never happened to try this particular scenario.
I'm new to MVC and I'm trying to figure out how to implement business logic in the auto generated Entities in an MVC project.
I know that if I create my own Model class I can put [Required] and other attributes on the fields but there doesn't seem to be an option to do that in the .edmx file.
Is there something I'm missing here?
Should I be creating my own classes that use the entities and put the logic in there?
It seems like there should be a way for me to do less work.
Thanks!
This can be achieved by using the buddy-class functionality in .NET implemented specifically for this reason. Once you have created your entities in your .ebmx file you can create partial classes to accompany your entities which define your business rules in a 'buddy class'.
[MetadataType(typeof(ProductMetadata))]
public partial class Product {
internal sealed class ProductMetadata {
[DisplayName("Name")]
[Required]
public string Name { get; set; }
[DispayName("Price")]
[Required, Range(1,10000)]
public decimal Price { get; set; }
[DisplayName("Description")]
public string Description { get; set; }
}
}
In the example above, assume that you already have a "Product" type defined in your object context which has properties for "Name", "Price", and "Description". So long as the buddy class type referenced by the MetadataTypeAttribute has matching property names, the attributes applied to the properties in the buddy class will be applied to the implementation type.
Note: if there are any property names in the buddy class which do not match the implementation type, you will get a runtime error. You only need to create matching properties in the buddy class for the properties you are interested in applying business rules to; all properties are optional.
I'm using entity framework designer to build entities. I found the designer really hard to use because it overwrite all your manually change after each model update using the designer. How did you round off this problem? Thanks!
What sorts of things are you manually changing? The entity still has to be mappable to the database schema.
You can extend or add functionality by declaring a partial class.
Don't make any change to the entities in the generated file -- I think it says that in the header.
All of the entities are generated as partial classes, which means you can declare "more" of the class elsewhere.
Here is an example:
public partial class Name
{
public string First { get; set; }
}
public partial class Name
{
public string Last { get; set; }
}
Although I have two different class declarations, potentially in different files and folders within the project, it gets compiled as one class.
I can now use the Name class like this:
var name = new Name();
name.First = "Jane";
name.Last = "Doe";
As you can see, the properties from both declarations are unified in an object of type Name.
To apply this to EF, leave the partial entity class alone, and declare a separate partial class with the same name to add functionality.
There is an alternative third-party tool. For more information, refer this. Currently, Devart Entity Developer doesn't include the Update From Database functionality. The Update From Database feature is on our roadmap.