Create Entity Framework Core with SQL Server project

Create your first EF core project.

You are creating an application for a small store chain. The chain has several store locations. The application you are building will handle the daily store procedures and inventory. As a developer, your task is to create a new EF Core project. The project will include a Store table. The Store table must have Id, Location, and Name columns. Create the table with the described columns.

Before you start you will need to have the following software and frameworks installed:

Project structure

SupermarketDomain - configure entity framework in .net core​

For simplicity of the example I put both the DBContext and the models in the same project. You could create separate projects for both of them if you feel the separation is necessary.

1. Create a new Class library project called SupermarketDomain.

2. Using NuGet package manager install EntityFrameworkCore.SQLServer

3. Create one new class SupermarketContext.cs to hold the database context. The class must inherit from DbContext.

3.1. Create one constructor that accepts DbContextOptions<SupermarketContext> options and passes it to its base. This is important so that the registration of the db context to the dependency injection works.

3.2. Create one more empty constructor.

3.3. Override OnConfiguring method and set a default connection string

public class SupermarketContext : DbContext
{
    public SupermarketContext(DbContextOptions<SupermarketContext> options) : base(options)
    {
    }

    public SupermarketContext()
    {
    }

    protected override void OnConfiguring(DbContextOptionsBuilder optionsBuilder)
    {
        optionsBuilder.UseSqlServer("Server=localhost\SQLEXPRESS;
        Initial Catalog=SuperMarket_Dev;Integrated Security=True;TrustServerCertificate=True;");
        base.OnConfiguring(optionsBuilder);
    }
}

4. Defining the Model - Create a second class called Store. This will represent the chain stores and will be represented as a table inside the database. By convention the Id property will be the table key and is auto incremented.

public class Store
 {
     public int Id { get; set; }
     public string Name { get; set; }
     public string Location { get; set; }
 }

5. Last step is registering the new Entity model inside the DBContext. We do that by creating one new DBSet collection property as follows:

public class SupermarketContext : DbContext
{
    public DbSet<Store> Stores { get; set; }
    
    public SupermarketContext(DbContextOptions<SupermarketContext> options) : base(options)
    {
    }

    public SupermarketContext()
    {
    }

    protected override void OnConfiguring(DbContextOptionsBuilder optionsBuilder)
    {
        optionsBuilder.UseSqlServer("Server=localhost\SQLEXPRESS;
        Initial Catalog=SuperMarket_Dev;Integrated Security=True;TrustServerCertificate=True;");
        base.OnConfiguring(optionsBuilder);
    }
}

Here the name of the property will be the name of the table.