Introduction to Entity Framework

Microsoft’s Entity Framework is an Object Relational Mapping (ORM) framework for ADO.NET. Let’s go through an example of how to use Entity Framework.

First, we will create a new Console application project:

Go to Manage NuGet Packages for Solution:

And select EntityFramework:

Select the project and Install:

Click OK and Accept:

You will see the following messages:

Once complete, you will see these new references in your project:

We can now connect this to our database and write some code. We have a database WideWorldImporters that we can connect to.

Select Add New Item:

Select Data and then ADO.NET Entity Data Model. We will call our model WideWorldEF:

Here we have different options for our model contents:

Select the first option and click Next.

Now we select the data connection:

Click Next:

Now we can select our Database Objects and Settings. You can see how this matches to our database:

We will select the Customers table:

Click Finish. You will now see the model loaded into your environment.

You can now use the code below to print each customer to the console app:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
 
namespace Carl.EntityFramework.Sample1
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            WideWorldImportersEntities db = new WideWorldImportersEntities();
            var query = from cust in db.Customers
                        select cust;
            List<Customer> custList = query.ToList();
            foreach (Customer c in custList)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(c.CustomerName);
            }
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
}

You can see how simplified it is to connect to the database and perform a read operation. You can also easily perform CRUD operations.

ABOUT CARL DE SOUZA

Carl de Souza is a developer and architect focusing on Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power BI, Azure, and AI.

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