I want to create an Entity Framework Model based on database using VS 2015.
There is some problem:
1) When I want to create model I get this warning:
2) When I create mode some file being generate like T4.
3) Generated class hasn't Data Annotations like :
[EdmEntityTypeAttribute(NamespaceName="SomeModel", Name="tblCode1")]
[Serializable()]
[DataContractAttribute(IsReference=true)]
4) In our group there are some people that have VS 2013 or 2010 that they can't use this type of models.
How I can create model using VS 2015 like VS 2010 or 2013 without T4 (Just 2 files like below)
Short answer:
You need to change the Code Generation Strategy property of the edmx from "T4" to "Legacy ObjectContext" and delete the .tt nodes from the Solution Exporer.
Long answer:
Here are the steps needed:
(1) Assuming you start by selecting "Add -> New Item -> ADO.NET Entity Data Model -> EF Designer from database".
(2) Follow the "Entity Data Model Wizard". The next is very important. When you get to the screen which asks you for the EF version you want to use, make sure you select EF 5.0, otherwise T4 template will be the only option you have:
(3) Finish the wizard. Say OK to security warnings like your first screenshot. The project structure will look like your second screenshot.
(4) Open the edmx file in a designer. Look at the Properties Window, there is a property called Code Generation Strategy which by default is "T4"
Change the property to "Legacy ObjectContext"
(5) Delete YourModel.Context.tt and YourMdel.tt nodes from the Solution Explorer and you are done.
A bit boring, but does what you want. The drawback is that you are limited to an outdated EF version, and the upcoming EF7 will retire edmx at all, so it might be a good time to start thinking of switching to the Code First approach. But until then, hope the above will help to keep your current process.
For generate "Code first" model (obtain a code first model starting from database) you can also use Code Smith Generator. You can start from POCO classes templates (or from NHibernate templates if you need serialization, IDataErroInfo, INotifyPropertyChanged, and so on implemented) and customize them is really simple (the syntax is based on ASP). Probably there is also a free version.
Looking around I found also an article and an open source tool that extract POCO classes from SQL Server database.
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/892233/POCO-Generator
Related
Using Entity Framework 6 Code First in an ASP.NET project with Visual Studio 2013, is there any way to rebuild (or update) the generated DataContext and model classes without stepping through the Entity Data Model Wizard every time?
I'm fully aware of how to do this with an EDMX designer, but again, I'm using the "Code First from database" method and just wondering if there's a one-click (or one console command) way to trigger the rebuild without having to delete the generated context class and then step through the Entity Data Model Wizard every time I make a change to the backing database.
In VS 2015 (and supposedly 2013/2012) you can use the Entity Framework Reverse POCO generator to accomplish this.
https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/ee4fcff9-0c4c-4179-afd9-7a2fb90f5838
You can make all your changes to database first, and to re-generate your models all you have to do is save your Database.tt file (usually I just add white space).
Code first requires you to create the DataContext by hand. You don't create/change the database and refresh the DataContext class. The Code first from database or EF Reverse POCO template is a middle ground between true Code First and the Database First approach of doing things. It meets at the middle by generating the same kind of POCO classes that you would have written by hand in Code First. They don't do it in Code First way but the end result is something similar to Code First. Hence the confusing name.
If you are using one of these templates to generate POCOs, you can right click on the t4 template file and click Run Custom Tool. If that doesn't work, you might want to delete that entity and then run the custom tool again. Also right clicking on the EDMX and clicking 'Update Model from Database' should work.
I have the solution for rebuild without wizard:
using the t4 is Transform All T4 Templates
and create the classes
We are using Entity Framework 6 with Model-First, which by default results that our entities, the dbcontext, the .tt files, and the model files are crammed in a single folder, without any structure.
I would like to achieve some separation, at least something like this:
Project root/Entities/entities generated from model
Project root/Repository/everything else (.tt, .edmx, etc...)
Is this possible?
It is not. EF is in charge of where it puts stuff and where it expects them to be; you can't change that.
What you could do in order to get a bit closer to what you want is to use EntityFramework Power Tools to reverse engineer the database and produce a set of POCO classes that can be used as your data access.
It's often described as Code-Second I believe.
You can installed the Power Tools and then select the location in your solution where you want the classes to be and then right-click and select "Reverse Engineer Database" {sic}
sure you can! I don't know what do you mean by
Project root/Entities/entities generated from model
Project root/Repository/everything else (.tt, .edmx, etc...)
but you can even separate the assembly. you can have you domain entities, repository and Context class in an assembly or in a namespace.(it's better to do that for make you app maintainable). take a look at this and this blog posts. hope it helps
As I need to work with C# and MySQL, I recently installed linq2db via its NuGet package. Once installed, I found out it came with a very sweet feature which is unmentioned in the docs: a set of T4 templates to auto-generate DB class and tables' POCOs! (WOW!)
So I decided to run T4s instead of write down my POCOs by myself, but here comes the wrong part: tables list for the db is not found, thus only the db class is created.
The following demo project generates tables for MySql
https://github.com/linq2db/examples/tree/master/MySql/GetStarted/DataModels
Regarding the auto generated classes.
Are you sure that you completed step 2?
It refers to modifying the line after the end of the comments (after the description of step 5) from
LoadMySqlMetadata("MyServer", "MyDatabase", "root", "TestPassword");
to something sensible.
After that, you'll get a 'sub'-file of the CopyMeMysql.tt (in VS, click expand icon to the left of the file in the project) called CopyMeMysql.generated.cs.
We have a fairly elaborate data model built from an existing database, then enhanced using partial classes to support additional methods & properties, inheritance, etc. We have not yet bitten the bullet to update this from ObjectContext to DbContext.
I am using VS2012, .net 4.5, EF 6.0.2, and have installed the EF 6.0.2 Tools for VS2012.
Following the recommended mechanism to update a project to EF6 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/dn469466) has been successful, including the addition of the EF 6 Entity Object generator as the code generation item.
Subsequent to making this change, I would like to update the model from the database to incorporate some recent schema changes into the model. Running through the "update model from database" dialog, what appears to be happening is that an entirely new dbcontext-based model & template is added to the project, in addition to the object context-based model that already exists in the project, and none of the changes are incorporated into the entity-object template.
Of course, this means there are hundreds of duplicate names defined in the project once the operation completes. The edmx properties do not appear to have an option that would control this behavior.
Certainly, making the transition to dbcontext is the right avenue ultimately, but would like to avoid taking that on imminently.
My experience is open edmx file in visual studio by double-click and then select all tables perform a full delete(press del). Then click save button on top of menu bar, it should delete all models automatically.
After it's done, then you can update model from database again.
Hope this helps.
I have been working with Entity Framework 4 and SQL Server. The main problem I have found is that the table names in the database are all lower case and has underscore. This means that when I create the entities in Visual Studio, the classes and the properties are all lower case with underscores Is there any way to achieve Pascal Casing for the classes created and Camel Casing for the Properties?
Eg:
table_name--> to be converted as TableName
Is there any other templates need to be added or any other way to achieve this.
Editing the class name and properties manually in is not recommended as i have huge number of entities
Why not use a T4 template to generate the entity classes? That way, you can add a method to convert the table names to the convention of your choice.
VS comes with a couple of built-in T4 templates for EF, so it's very likely that you can just pick one of these and modify it. I wouldn't recommend writing your own from scratch!
If you haven't used T4 templates before, a quick start is to open your EF model in the designer, right-click a blank part of the design surface and choose "Add Code Generation Item." This will open a dialog with the installed T4 templates for EF, and you can choose whichever you feel most appropriate.
You can then right-click the T4 template files in Solution Explorer (it will have a .tt extension) and choose "Run Custom Tool" to generate the entities themselves. You can edit the .tt file (it's just a plain text file, containing something that looks horribly like VBScript!) and make the modifications. Then run the custom tool again and see if the generated entities have the right names.
Hope this helps.
The following blog post has a great response on how to do this. It involves modifying the T4 template file created when creating the data model.
http://khalidk7.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/entity-framework-ef-t4-template-modification-to-output-pascalcasing-database-objects/