ASP.NET Web API - App.config does not work?

Question

I have simple self-host Web API application. I installed EnityFramework6 package and added following lines in App.config under <enityframework> section:

<contexts>
    <context type="simple_api.MyContext, simple_api">
        <databaseInitializer type="simple_api.MyInitializer, simple_api" />
    </context>
</contexts>

Initializer class is like following:

public class MyInitializer : System.Data.Entity.DropCreateDatabaseIfModelChanges<Context>
{
    protected override void Seed(Context context)
    {
        Console.log("My seed method");
        var persons = new List<Person> { };
        var john = new Person() { Firstname = "John", Lastname = "Doe" };
        context.Persons.Add(john);
        context.SaveChanges();
    }
}

I enabled and created migration, but the problem is that running it does not trigger my Seed method:

PM> Update-Database
Specify the '-Verbose' flag to view the SQL statements being applied to the target database.
Applying explicit migrations: [201805210804206_initial].
Applying explicit migration: 201805210804206_initial.
Running Seed method.

I also tried changing App.config , but It seems to be totally ignored, because <context type="foobar, nomatterwhatishere"> does not trigger any warning nor error.

What can be the problem?

--

By the way, when I configured log4net , file was ignored also and I have to call log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator.Configure() . Maybe there is similar thing for EntityFramework?

Answer 1

I was wrong: config file works, but Seed method for DropCreateDatabaseIfModelChanges is not triggered. I replaced it with DropCreateDatabaseAlways and after querying model it throwed exception:

Failed to set database initializer of type 'simple_api.MyInitializer, simple_api' for DbContext type 'simple_api.MyContext, simple_api' specified in the application configuration. See inner exception for details.

After some debugging I figured out that namespace is simple_api , but assembly name is simple-api , so configuration should be as follows:

...
<entityframework>
    <contexts>
        <context type="simple_api.MyContext, simple-api">
            <databaseInitializer type="simple_api.MyInitializer, simple-api" />
        </context>
    </contexts>
    ...
</entityframework>
...

Now everything is working, but I am not sure why Seed was not called for DropCreateDatabaseIfModelChanges .