Code first approach In Entity frameWork

Code-first approach we have to create custom classes and based on those custom classes entity framework can generate database automatically for us.

POCO :- POCO class is the class which doesn’t depend on any framework specific base class. It is like any other normal .net class that is why it is called “Plain Old CLR Objects” These POCO entities (also known as persistence-ignorant objects) support most of the same LINQ queries as Entity Object derived entities.

In code First approach we doesn’t work on designer.tt(EDMX). You have to write POCOs classes for this as before I explained you about POCO classes. For creating Code First approach in entity framework First you have to install Entity framework as I shown you in earlier tutorial. Go to your nugget package manager and  search on online as entity framework and download.

Example for Code first approach.

We will understand code first approach with an example of an employee where a user able to add employee and update information of an employee. For this first we have to create classes of the properties of employee. After that we will design database.

Add a class there you put these Below  properties those are defined for an employee.

namespace WindowsFormsApplication1

{

  

   public class Employee

    {

       public int EmployeeId { get; set; }

        public string FirstName { get; set; }

        public string LastName { get; set; }

        public DateTime? DateOfBirth { get; set; }    

       

    }

}

Now we have defined properties of employees. Code first approach needed a Context  class .This class is derived from DBContext. DbContext  is a Collection of entities. So when we have to inebriate this class in defined class.

Add a class name is “CodeFirsrApproach.cs”

using System.Data.Entity;

namespace WindowsFormsApplication1

{

    class CodeFirsrApproach : DbContext

    {

// we will tell the context what should be created in the database Add the following line:

        public DbSet<Employee> Employees { get; set; }          

    }

}            

DbSet is a collection of entities.

This ensure us to that it will contain the collection of all employee information and table employee will created. Now you check your SQLServer instance and add this below code in programe.cs class

    var person = new Employee

            {

                FirstName = "Munesh",

                LastName = "Sharma",

                DateOfBirth = DateTime.Now

            };

            using (var context = new CodeFirsrApproach())

            {

                context.Employees.Add(person);

                context.SaveChanges();

            }

            Console.Write("Employee information saved");

            Console.ReadLine();

SaveChanges() is a method which automatically save the data. So when you will run this application its automatically save a data in database.

Now you go to your Sql server database there you see will your tables with and fields. There we no need to pass any parameter it automatically create table in local machine.