I have used Entity Framework for some projects over the past years, but never taken advantages of the Code-First functionality provided. However, with the stronger presence of Windows Azure and new services in “Microsoft Could”, I see how “Code-First Migrations” will help me versioning and deploying applications and database definitions.
Earlier this week I tried Code-First functionality together with ASP.NET Web API, but it became too complex to get things running, and I decided to take a step back and concentrate on Code-First Migrations.
After some googling and examples found on codeproject.com and MSDN blogs, I found a simple and great “getting started tutorial”. This is a basic tutorial for “Code-First Migrations” and shows most of the available functions, such as
- Installing latest version of Entity Framework from NuGet Manager
- Creating a data model in the model classes
- Creating database from Visual Studio 2012
- Adding changes through a new migration
- Switching between different version/migrations
- Adding custom code in the migration (class model)
- Rolling back to original version
- Generating script for full database
- Make sure program has the latest version of the database
Full source-code.
Next up:
Combining Code-First and ASP.NET Web API
Found a great post by Jon Galloway, explaining how to create POCO/Model classes for the code-First Migration in Entity Framework.
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