Entity Framework Imports stored procedures without model-first approach

Question

Right now i have a model-first approach with EDMX model in my project. But how can i work without EDMX file and be able to import stored procedures signatures form database as well as make updates of my entities when database has been changed ?

Answer 1

I think that you are looking for the (misnamed) "Code First" using "Reverse Engineering" to create your code from a database. http://haroldrv.com/2015/04/using-entity-framework-code-first-from-database/ . "Database First" still uses EDMX mapping files which many find to be problematic to work with and are no longer used in the latest EF Core 1 (formerly EF 7).

As far as mapping the stored procedures to entities, this MSDN article https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/dn468673 shows how. I do not believe there is an automatic way to pull in the stored procedure signatures like you can with the tables themselves.

  modelBuilder  
  .Entity<Blog>()  
  .MapToStoredProcedures(s =>  
    {  
      s.Update(u => u.HasName("modify_blog"));  
      s.Delete(d => d.HasName("delete_blog"));  
      s.Insert(i => i.HasName("insert_blog"));  
    });

You can also just call stored procedures directly without the mapping as below.

var blogs = context.Database.SqlQuery<Blog>(
   "getBlogs @param1", new SqlParameter("param1", param1)
);