Introduction
Entity Framework is an Object /Relational Mapping (ORM) framework. It is an enhancement of ADO.NET to work with databases.
Using Entity Framework, developers write their query in LINQ and get the result as a strongly typed object.
Description
Entity Framework can be used in three different ways, which is also called the EF approach
- Entity Framework Code First
- Entity Framework Model First
- Entity Framework Data First
All three approaches are used depending on the requirement.
I have explained the very first “Code First.” Others will be explained in subsequent articles.
Entity Framework Code First
As explained above, in Entity Framework, we facilitate work on strongly typed objects.
Step 1. Primarily add a new Project/website in Visual Studio and create a User-defined type/class.
![class]()
Step 2. Add some properties, which will be the columns in Table
namespace EntityFrameworkCodeFirst
{
public class Employee
{
public int ID { get; set; }
public string EmployeeName { get; set; }
public decimal Salary { get; set; }
}
}
Step 3. Now add another class that inherits the Data Context class. The data Context class has the responsibility to create databases and maintain connections.
Import: System.Linq;
![namespace]()
Step 4. In Web.config, add the connection string,
<connectionStrings>
<add name="MyCon"
connectionString="DataSource=.;InitialCatalog=MyDatabase;IntegratedSecurity=true"
providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>
</connectionStrings>
Step 5. Finally, create an instance of EmployeeDataContext class
protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
using (EmployeeDataContext Edc = new EmployeeDataContext())
{
Employee emp = new Employee()
{
EmployeeName = "testName"
};
Edc.Employees.Add(emp);
Edc.SaveChanges();
}
}
Here is the Solution Explorer has been created.
![explorer]()
![table]()
Conclusion
Hope you like this article. We will get to know about Data Annotations in further articles.
Read more articles on Entity Framework