Caution

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

Console Application to Existing Database (Database First)¶

In this walkthrough, you will build a console application that performs basic data access against a Microsoft SQL Server database using Entity Framework. You will use reverse engineering to create an Entity Framework model based on an existing database.

In this article:

Tip

You can view this article’s sample on GitHub.

Prerequisites ¶

The following prerequisites are needed to complete this walkthrough:

Blogging database ¶

This tutorial uses a Blogging database on your LocalDb instance as the existing database.

Note

If you have already created the Blogging database as part of another tutorial, you can skip these steps.

Open Visual Studio
Tools ‣ Connect to Database...
Select Microsoft SQL Server and click Continue
Enter (localdb)\mssqllocaldb as the Server Name
Enter master as the Database Name and click OK
The master database is now displayed under Data Connections in Server Explorer
Right-click on the database in Server Explorer and select New Query
Copy the script, listed below, into the query editor
Right-click on the query editor and select Execute

CREATE DATABASE [Blogging]
GO

USE [Blogging]
GO

CREATE TABLE [Blog] (
    [BlogId] int NOT NULL IDENTITY,
    [Url] nvarchar(max) NOT NULL,
    CONSTRAINT [PK_Blog] PRIMARY KEY ([BlogId])
);
GO

CREATE TABLE [Post] (
    [PostId] int NOT NULL IDENTITY,
    [BlogId] int NOT NULL,
    [Content] nvarchar(max),
    [Title] nvarchar(max),
    CONSTRAINT [PK_Post] PRIMARY KEY ([PostId]),
    CONSTRAINT [FK_Post_Blog_BlogId] FOREIGN KEY ([BlogId]) REFERENCES [Blog] ([BlogId]) ON DELETE CASCADE
);
GO

INSERT INTO [Blog] (Url) VALUES 
('http://blogs.msdn.com/dotnet'), 
('http://blogs.msdn.com/webdev'), 
('http://blogs.msdn.com/visualstudio')
GO

Create a new project ¶

Open Visual Studio 2015
File ‣ New ‣ Project...
From the left menu select Templates ‣ Visual C# ‣ Windows
Select the Console Application project template
Ensure you are targeting .NET Framework 4.5.1 or later
Give the project a name and click OK

Install Entity Framework ¶

To use EF Core, install the package for the database provider(s) you want to target. This walkthrough uses SQL Server. For a list of available providers see Database Providers.

Tools ‣ NuGet Package Manager ‣ Package Manager Console
Run Install-Package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer

To enable reverse engineering from an existing database we need to install a couple of other packages too.

Run Install-Package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Tools –Pre
Run Install-Package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer.Design

Reverse engineer your model ¶

Now it’s time to create the EF model based on your existing database.

Tools –> NuGet Package Manager –> Package Manager Console
Run the following command to create a model from the existing database

Scaffold-DbContext "Server=(localdb)\mssqllocaldb;Database=Blogging;Trusted_Connection=True;" Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer

The reverse engineer process created entity classes and a derived context based on the schema of the existing database. The entity classes are simple C# objects that represent the data you will be querying and saving.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace EFGetStarted.ConsoleApp.ExistingDb
{
    public partial class Blog
    {
        public Blog()
        {
            Post = new HashSet<Post>();
        }

        public int BlogId { get; set; }
        public string Url { get; set; }

        public virtual ICollection<Post> Post { get; set; }
    }
}

The context represents a session with the database and allows you to query and save instances of the entity classes.

using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore;
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Metadata;

namespace EFGetStarted.ConsoleApp.ExistingDb
{
    public partial class BloggingContext : DbContext
    {
        protected override void OnConfiguring(DbContextOptionsBuilder optionsBuilder)
        {
            #warning To protect potentially sensitive information in your connection string, you should move it out of source code. See http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=723263 for guidance on storing connection strings.
            optionsBuilder.UseSqlServer(@"Server=(localdb)\mssqllocaldb;Database=Blogging;Trusted_Connection=True;");
        }

        protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
        {
            modelBuilder.Entity<Blog>(entity =>
            {
                entity.Property(e => e.Url).IsRequired();
            });

            modelBuilder.Entity<Post>(entity =>
            {
                entity.HasOne(d => d.Blog)
                    .WithMany(p => p.Post)
                    .HasForeignKey(d => d.BlogId);
            });
        }

        public virtual DbSet<Blog> Blog { get; set; }
        public virtual DbSet<Post> Post { get; set; }
    }
}

Use your model ¶

You can now use your model to perform data access.

Open Program.cs
Replace the contents of the file with the following code

using System;

namespace EFGetStarted.ConsoleApp.ExistingDb
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            using (var db = new BloggingContext())
            {
                db.Blog.Add(new Blog { Url = "http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet" });
                var count = db.SaveChanges();
                Console.WriteLine("{0} records saved to database", count);

                Console.WriteLine();
                Console.WriteLine("All blogs in database:");
                foreach (var blog in db.Blog)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine(" - {0}", blog.Url);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Debug ‣ Start Without Debugging

You will see that one blog is saved to the database and then the details of all blogs are printed to the console.

Console Application to Existing Database (Database First)¶

Prerequisites¶

Blogging database¶

Create a new project¶

Install Entity Framework¶

Reverse engineer your model¶

Use your model¶