How to bind EF Code First DbContext to an Asp.Net DataSource?

Question

I've created the following Context to be used with Entity Framework Code First :

public class Context : DbContext
    {
        public DbSet<Animal> Animals { get; set; }
    }

Now I would like to use this Context in an Asp.Net application to perform CRUD operations using a GridView . I need to create a DataSource to do the data binding. How would I go about?

The ASP part would look like this:

<asp:GridView runat="server" DataSourceID="animalDataSource" DataKeyNames="AnimalID" AutoGenerateColumns="false">   
    <Columns>
        <asp:BoundField DataField="Description" HeaderText="Description" />
        <asp:CommandField ShowCancelButton="true" ShowEditButton="true" ShowDeleteButton="true" />
    </Columns>
</asp:GridView>

Answer 1

You can use EntityDataSource as source for your GridView and implement handler for ContextCreating event:

protected void DataSource_ContextCreating(object sender, EntityDataSourceContextCreatingEventArgs e)
{
    var context = new Context();
    e.Context = ((IObjectContextAdapter)context).ObjectContext;
}

Then you just need to configure the data source in the page. EntitySetName should be hopefully same as your DbSet property name exposed on the context.

Other way is using ObjectDataSource which will make a bridge between GridView and DbSet<Animal> but this can be more complex especially if you want bi-didrectional data binding.