Getting Started

1. Create a new directory (folder) named StudentInformation.
2. Open a console and change the directory to the newly created StudentInformation folder.
3. Create a new mvc application by running the following command: dotnet new mvc
4. Install EntityFramework package with the following command: dotnet add package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore
5. Install the EntityFramework Design package with the following command: dotnet add package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Design
6. Install the EntityFramework SqlServer provider package with the follwing command dotnet add package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer
7. Install the Entity Framework dotnet CLI tools with the following command: dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef

Creating Models

Now lets create a few classes for Student, Course, and Enrollment that will serve as our data models.

Student Model

1. Go to the Models directory (folder) and create a Student.cs file.
2. Add the following code to Student.cs:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace StudentInformation.Models
{
    public class Student
    {
        public Guid ID { get; set; }
        public string LastName { get; set; }
        public string FirstMidName { get; set; }
        public DateTime EnrollmentDate { get; set; }

        public ICollection<Enrollment> Enrollments { get; set; }
    }
}

All models should have a property named ID. Our Entity Framework will automatically use the ID property as the primary key (unique identifier) for each entity. In this example we are setting the ID type to Guid to ensure that every ID is unique. The Enrollments property is a type of ICollection<Enrollment>, though the Enrollment class doesn't exist yet. We will create it later. This Enrollments property is referred to as a Navigation Property. Navigation Properties inform Entity Framework how multiple models are related to each other. Because Enrollments is a ICollection<Enrollment>, we are telling Entity Framework that the Student entity has many Enrollments.

Enrollment Model

1. Go to the Models directory (folder) and create an Enrollment.cs file.
2. Add the following code to Enrollment.cs

using System;

namespace StudentInformation.Models
{
    public enum Grade
    {
        A, B, C, D, F
    }

    public class Enrollment
    {
        public Guid ID { get; set; }
        public Guid CourseID { get; set; }
        public Guid StudentID { get; set; }
        public Grade? Grade { get; set; }

        public Course Course { get; set; }
        public Student Student { get; set; }
    }
}

An Enrollment entity maintains the relationship between the Student and Course entities. Student and Course are considered Navigation Properties of the Enrollment class. StudentID and CourseID are the foreign keys (unique identifiers) for the Student and Course entities. Entity Framework will automatically map the Navigation Properties Student and Course to the foreign key properties StudentID and CourseID by convention. Please note that the Course model hasn't been created yet, we'll do that one next!

Course Model

1. Go to the Models directory (folder) and create an Course.cs file.
2. Add the following code to Course.cs:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace StudentInformation.Models
{
    public class Course
    {
        public Guid ID { get; set; }
        public string Title { get; set; }
        public int Credits { get; set; }

        public ICollection<Enrollment> Enrollments { get; set; }
    }
}

Similar to the Student model, the Course model has a Nagivation Property Enrollments since each course can have many enrollments. Our initial data models are now complete.

Creating and Registering the Database Context

We will be using Entity Framework as our ORM (Object Relational Mapping) software. EF will help us generate a database based on the models we described earlier.

Create the StudentInformation Database Context

1. Create a new direcrtory (folder) in your project named Data. This folder should be at the same level as your Controllers or Models folders.
2. Create a new file in the Data folder named StudentInformationContext.cs
3. Add the following code to your StudentInformationContext.cs file:

using StudentInformation.Models;
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore;

namespace StudentInformation.Data
{
    //Creates a new database context named StudentInformationContext
    public class StudentInformationContext : DbContext
    {
        public StudentInformationContext(DbContextOptions<StudentInformationContext> options) : base(options)
        {
        }

        //This is where we register our models as entities
        public DbSet<Course> Courses { get; set; }
        public DbSet<Enrollment> Enrollments { get; set; }
        public DbSet<Student> Students { get; set; }
    }
}

The StudentInformationContext context is how our application will interact with the database to create, read, update, and delete Student, Course, and Enrollment entities.

Register the StudentInformation Database Context

Now that we created a StudentInformationContext Database context, we need to tell our application to use the context. We'll do this by registering our new context in the ConfigureServices method in the Startup.cs file. This will make our context available to all our Controllers via the magic of Dependency Injection. Sounds scary, but for now all you need to know is that our context will be easily accessible throughout our application.

1. Find the Startup.cs file in the root of your application.
2. Add the following code inside the ConfigureServices method in Startup.cs:

    services.AddDbContext<StudentInformationContext>(options =>
        options.UseSqlServer(Configuration.GetConnectionString("DefaultConnection")));

Be sure to also add necessary using statements at the top of your Startup.cs file:

using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore;
using StudentInformation.Data;

3. Now we need to define what DefaultConnection is. We will define our DefaultConnection in the appsettings.json file. In this example, we are using SqlLite to connect to a local SQL file that will live inside our project. Find the appsettings.json file, and add the ConnectionStrings section. The resulting file should look something like this:

{
  "ConnectionStrings": {
    "DefaultConnection": "Server=(localdb)\\mssqllocaldb;Database=StudentInformation;Trusted_Connection=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=true"
  },
  "Logging": {
    "LogLevel": {
      "Default": "Information",
      "Microsoft": "Warning",
      "Microsoft.Hosting.Lifetime": "Information"
    }
  },
  "AllowedHosts": "*"
}

Entity Framework Code First Migrations

Now that we have our context setup, we need to generate our first Code First Migration. A Code First Migration takes the models that we registered in our StudentInformationContext context and applies them as a series of changes to be made on our target database. Let's generate our first migration.

• In the terminal, enter the following command: dotnet ef migrations add InitialCreate

In the prior command, IntialCreate is the name of our migration. Each migration should have a unique name, and should be descriptive enough that we know what will happen if we run the migration. Every time we make a change to any of the Models such as Student, Course, or Enrollment we will need to generate a new migration so we can apply those changes to our database. The advantage of Code First Migrations is that Entity Framework takes care of creating all the tables and columns in your database, all you need to do is write the models. Neat!

• Once the initial migration has been generated, you should see a new directory (folder) named Migrations. Inside this folder you will see a file such as 20200308233652_InitialCreate.cs which contains all the actions that this migration will apply to the database. The file name will vary depending on when the migration was generated.

Applying pending migrations to your database

Once a migration has been generated, you must apply the migration to the database. To do so run the following command in the terminal:

dotnet ef database update

Scaffolding Controllers and Views

It's now possible to scaffold (generate) code based on our Models and StudentInformationContext. This helps us save time by generating boilerplate code that we can later modify. Let's generate a controller and a view for the Student model.

Install Code Generation Tools and Packages

1. Install the dotnet-aspnet-codegenerator tool via the following command:

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-aspnet-codegenerator

2. Add the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.CodeGeneration.Design package to your project via the following command:

dotnet add package Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.CodeGeneration.Design

Scaffold the Student Controller and Views

Now that our tools are installed, run the following command to scaffold the Student controller and views:

dotnet aspnet-codegenerator controller --model Student --dataContext StudentInformationContext --controllerName StudentController --relativeFolderPath Controllers --useDefaultLayout

Once the command has ran, a new StudentController.cs file will be available in the Controllers directory (folder). There is also a set a views for Student in the Views/Student folder.

Wrapping things up

Now that we have a controller and views for our Student model, let's make sure we can navigate to our Student view by adding it to the navigation menu.

1. Find the _Layout.cshtml file under the Views/Shared directory (folder).
2. In _Layout.cshtml, find the <nav> element and add another nav-item inside the <ul>. The new nav-item should look like this:

<li class="nav-item">
    <a class="nav-link text-dark" asp-area="" asp-controller="Student" asp-action="Index">Students</a>
</li>

The asp-controller property tells our MVC application which Controller this link should link to, and the asp-action property tells our applicication which Action on the controller this link should link to. In essence, this generate a link with an href property of /Student. When we navigate to /Student in our browser, our application invokes the Index action on our StudentController. If you look in the StudentController.cs file, you will see that the Index action simply uses the database context to list out all the students in our database. The view that is rendered is chosen automatically by convetion. In other words, because our controller is named StudentController, and our action is named Index, our MVC application will look for a view named Student and render the corresponding view named Index.cshtml. It is also possible to specify which view to render in the StudentController.

Now that we added Student as a navigation item, let's start our application and navigate to the Student page. We should now be able to Create, Read, Update, and Delete students. To start the application run the following command in the terminal:

dotnet run

This command will show you the URL that your application is running on.

Acknowledgements

This tutorial is based on the excellent Get started with EF Core in an ASP.NET MVC web app tutorial from Microsoft.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/data/ef-mvc/intro?view=aspnetcore-3.1