Reading-Notes

Entity Framework and APIs

This topic is important to me because I want to learn how to create my own Apis

Retrospective 12

References

MVC with EF

Entity Framework Core

Data Seeding

Entity Framework Core

User Secrets

Intro to APIs

Introduction to Entity Framework in ASP.NET Core MVC

This tutorial introduces Entity Framework (EF) in the context of ASP.NET Core MVC. Entity Framework is an object-relational mapper that simplifies database operations by allowing developers to work with databases using C# or VB.NET code, instead of writing SQL queries.

• ORM (Object-Relational Mapping): Entity Framework is an ORM tool that bridges the gap between object-oriented programming and relational databases. It allows you to work with database objects as if they were regular C# objects.

• DbContext: DbContext is the main class that provides an interface to interact with the database. It represents the session with the database, allowing you to query and manipulate data.

• Entities: Entities are C# classes that represent tables in the database. Each instance of an entity represents a row in the table.

• LINQ (Language Integrated Query): Entity Framework uses LINQ to query and manipulate data. LINQ provides a more readable and type-safe way to work with data compared to writing raw SQL queries.

Steps Covered

1. Create a Model:
   • Define C# classes to represent your database tables (entities).
2. Create a DbContext:
   • Create a subclass of DbContext to establish a connection to the database and provide an interface to interact with it.
3. Configure Entities:
   • Use data annotations or fluent API to configure relationships, data types, and other attributes of your entities.
4. Querying Data:
   • Use LINQ to query data from the database using the DbContext.
5. Updating Data:
   • Add, modify, and delete data using methods provided by the DbContext.
6. Database Migrations:
   • Use migrations to manage changes to the database schema over time.

Benefits

• Code-Centric Approach: Developers can work with databases using familiar programming concepts, making it easier to manage and maintain data-related code.

• Type Safety: Entity Framework provides type-safe queries and operations, reducing the likelihood of runtime errors.

• Cross-Platform: Entity Framework works with various database providers, allowing your ASP.NET Core applications to run on different platforms and use different databases.

• Automatic SQL Generation: Entity Framework generates SQL queries based on your LINQ queries, reducing the need for writing raw SQL.

Practical Use Cases

• Web Applications: Building web applications that need to interact with a database to store and retrieve data.

• Enterprise Applications: Developing enterprise-level applications with complex data models and relationships.

• APIs: Creating APIs that handle data storage and retrieval for various client applications.

Things I want to know more about

I want to learn more about the databse relationships.

I want to learn more about framework migrations.