Caution

This documentation is for EF Core. For EF6.x and earlier release see http://msdn.com/data/ef.

Note

The configuration in this section is applicable to relational databases in general. The extension methods shown here will become available when you install a relational database provider (due to the shared Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Relational package).

Default Values

The default value of a column is the value that will be inserted if a new row is inserted but no value is specified for the column.

Conventions

By convention, a default value is not configured.

Data Annotations

You can not set a default value using Data Annotations.

Fluent API

You can use the Fluent API to specify the default value for a property.

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    class MyContext : DbContext
    {
        public DbSet<Blog> Blogs { get; set; }

        protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
        {
            modelBuilder.Entity<Blog>()
                .Property(b => b.Rating)
                .HasDefaultValue(3);
        }
    }

    public class Blog
    {
        public int BlogId { get; set; }
        public string Url { get; set; }
        public int Rating { get; set; }
    }

You can also specify a SQL fragment that is used to calculate the default value.

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    class MyContext : DbContext
    {
        public DbSet<Blog> Blogs { get; set; }

        protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
        {
            modelBuilder.Entity<Blog>()
                .Property(b => b.Created)
                .HasDefaultValueSql("getdate()");
        }
    }

    public class Blog
    {
        public int BlogId { get; set; }
        public string Url { get; set; }
        public DateTime Created { get; set; }
    }