Entity Framework In MVC - Part One

Mithilesh Kumar

8y131.9k7100Article

MVC Entity Framework

7 Comments

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Dinorego Mphogo8y ago
Hi Mithilesh, I have followed your instruction on VS 2018 on Console application but I have challenges with with creating an object on line 8 "ExampleDBEntities objEntity = new ExampleDBEntities();" what exactly do you create a class ExampleDBEntities? and what does it represent as part of Entity Framework?
- Dinorego Mphogo8y ago
  Understandable now. Thank you for the article!
- Mithilesh Kumar8y ago
  In Current article, I used database first approach when you add the data base using entity framework that time it will create automatically entity class it is call dbcontext class so here ExampleDb is database and entity is post fix ..i.e ExampleDb+Entity =ExampleDbEntity
Farhan Ahmed8y ago
Like it. Add stored procedure too
- Mithilesh Kumar8y ago
  Yes. Thank you......
Hiten Pandya8y ago
Good Startup for beginners in Entity with Straight forward write up.
- Mithilesh Kumar8y ago
  Thank you.............

Today I will give a brief introduction about Entity framework and how to implement Entity framework in MVC.

What is Entity framework?

Entity framework is an ORM (Object Relational Mapping) tool.

Object Relational Mapping (ORM) is a technique of accessing a relational database; .i.e., whatever has tables and store procedure these things we interact with database in class, method and property of the object format.

Features of ORM in entity framework

Map our database types to our code types
Avoid repetitive data access code
Access code automatically based on the data model class
Support a clean separation of concerns and independent development that allows parallel, simultaneous development of application
Easily reuse the data object
Application Maintainability

How to Install and Update using NuGet

Install-Package EntityFramework

Update-Package EntityFramework

Now we will see the practical from basic so first we will start using console application and how to use entity framework in console application so for this, open the visual studio and go file option and select console and click okay

And click OK

After opening the console application, Entity framework is not installed by default.

In the above pic, it has not installed Entity framework so first we will install the Entity framework.

Go to Tools option ->New Get Package Manager -> Package manager

After that write the command “Install-Package EntityFramwork” in command window

Entity Framework

And press enter.

Or you can check this link for all versions

In Entity framework we follow the three approaches for communicating with database

Database First
Code First
Model First

Now we have to add Entity so here I am going to use database first approach when we have an already-existing database then we will prefer the database first approach. So for this right click our solution explorer and go add and select data in left panel and then select ADO.Net Entity Data Model.

Click next button, after that new connection and enter your sql credential.

After that click Ok.

And then click next and select your table.

And then click finish button,

Entity Framework

After that we will write the code for retrieving the data from our sql database. In that I created an employee table and using this we will program the retrieve operation.

Now open the program class file and first add the necessary namespace.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
Now we will write program
for bind the data
class Program {
static void Main(string[] args) {
ExampleDBEntities objEntity = new ExampleDBEntities();
List < EmployeeDetail > lstEmp = new List < EmployeeDetail > ();
lstEmp = objEntity.EmployeeDetails.ToList();
Console.WriteLine();
Console.WriteLine(" Name" + " " + "Address" + " " + "EmailId" + " " + "Mobile Number" + " " + "Dept Name");
Console.WriteLine("------------------------------------------------------------------------------");
foreach(var item in lstEmp) {
Console.WriteLine(item.EmpName + " | " + item.Address + " | " + item.EmailId + " | " + item.MobileNo + " | " + item.DeptName);
}
Console.ReadLine();
}
}

Summary

In this article, we saw a brief introduction of Entity framework and how to install it. And also we saw how to retrieve the data from sql server using the database-first approach. In the next article we will see about the code first approach in Entity framework using MVC.