Entity Framework Core Cookbook

Entity Framework Core Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Ricardo Peres

Buy this Book

Entity Framework Core Cookbook - Second Edition

By: Ricardo Peres

Buy this Book

Overview of this book

Entity Framework is a highly recommended Object Relation Mapping tool used to build complex systems. In order to survive in this growing market, the knowledge of a framework that helps provide easy access to databases, that is, Entity Framework has become a necessity. This book will provide .NET developers with this knowledge and guide them through working efficiently with data using Entity Framework Core. You will start off by learning how to efficiently use Entity Framework in practical situations. You will gain a deep understanding of mapping properties and find out how to handle validation in Entity Framework. The book will then explain how to work with transactions and stored procedures along with improving Entity Framework using query libraries. Moving on, you will learn to improve complex query scenarios and implement transaction and concurrency control. You will then be taught to improve and develop Entity Framework in complex business scenarios. With the concluding chapter on performance and scalability, this book will get you ready to use Entity Framework proficiently.

Entity Framework Core Cookbook - Second Edition

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewer

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

Improving Entity Framework in the Real World

Introduction

Improving Entity Framework by using a code-first approach

Unit testing and mocking

Creating databases from code

Creating mock database connections

Implementing the repository pattern

Implementing the unit of work pattern

Mapping Entities

Introduction

Mapping non-public members

Mapping interfaces

Shadow properties

Creating one-to-one maps

Creating one-to-many maps

Creating many-to-many maps

Creating custom conventions

Using sequence key generators

Using GUIDs as keys

Implementing inheritance – Table per Class hierarchy

Validation and Changes

Introduction

Validating simple properties

Validating the whole entity

Validating groups of entities

Intercepting saving changes

Intercepting property changes

Setting the state of an entity

Improving MVC UI with entity framework validation

Inserting, updating, and deleting entities with stored procedures

Updating the database from model changes

Dumping the SQL script for the database creation

Transactions and Concurrency Control

Introduction

Using explicit transactions

Using transactions in custom SQL operations

Implementing optimistic concurrency in SQL Server

Implementing optimistic concurrency in a database-agnostic way

Querying

Introduction

Executing client-side functions in LINQ queries

Mixing SQL with LINQ queries

Getting entities from the local cache

Creating filtered collections

Creating reusable queries

Querying shadow properties

Implementing the query object pattern

Using dynamic LINQ

Advanced Scenarios

Introduction

Generating entities from the database

Implementing multitenancy

Strongly typed bulk operations

Handling soft deletes

Adding logging

Capturing the audit data

Retrieving entity metadata

Improving MVC applications

Hooking infrastructure services

Using other databases

Performance and Scalability

Introduction

Improving the performance of queries

Testing and profiling queries

Using asynchronous operations

Eager loading

Using the cache

Pitfalls

Introduction

GroupBy executes on the client side

Table per class hierarchy requires nullable columns for derived classes

References not eagerly fetched are lost

Date/time operations are not supported

Paging in SQL Server earlier than 2012

Database null semantics

Migrations and contexts with parameterized constructors

Migrations with contexts in different projects

Accessing the service provider too soon

Setting the maximum string length

Mapping discriminator columns

Composite primary keys

Refreshing entities

Cascading entity deletes

Index

Customer Reviews

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Using sequence key generators

Historically, Entity Framework offered two ways to handle primary key generation:

Using the SQL Server IDENTITY mechanism
Manually setting the key

There are several problems with this approach. One is that the IDENTITY mechanism really only works in SQL Server, although similar features exist in other RDBMs, such as the MySQL AUTOINCREMENT. Another one is that the ORM, because it doesn't know the key to be inserted beforehand, needs to get into some trouble to figure it out after a record is inserted. Finally, there are far more efficient and flexible mechanisms that do not rely on a specific database engine, such as the High-Low algorithm.

Knowing this, Microsoft took a step forward and introduced an implementation of High-Low in Entity Framework Core 1. The downside to it is that, for now at least, it requires SQL Server 2012: the way it was implemented is dependent on sequences that were only introduced in SQL Server 2012. So we're still stuck.

Getting ready

We...

Entity Framework Core Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Ricardo Peres

Entity Framework Core Cookbook - Second Edition

By: Ricardo Peres

Overview of this book

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Entity Framework Core Cookbook - Second Edition

Using sequence key generators

Getting ready