Entity Framework Core Command Line Reference

My cheat sheet for using Entity Framework Core CLI.

Installing Entity Framework Core command line

The .NET Entity Framework command line tools can be installed globally in PowerShell, or just for a specific project.

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef

After installation, it might be a good idea to update the tools:

dotnet tool update --global dotnet-ef

Add the Entity Framework Packages to a Project

In order to use the Entity Framework command line tools for a .NET Core project, it's necessary to install the Design package. This could be done using the EF Core CLI or the NuGet Package Manager.

dotnet add package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Design

I also recommend ensuring the following packages are also installed:

• Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore

• Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer

• Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Tools

Scaffolding DbContext

To generate migrations, Entity Framework will require the project to have a DbContext. If there isn't one present (there should be), this can be scaffolded from whatever connection string(s) might exist in the configuration file. For this, it might be necessary to define the connection string and the provider.

dotnet ef dbcontext scaffold [Connection String] [Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer] -o Models

This should create the DbContext and place the model .cs files in the Models directory.

Generate a SQL script from the DbContext

dotnet ef dbcontext script

Add a migration for the project

dotnet ef migrations add [Name]

Generate a SQL script for the latest migration

dotnet ef migrations script

Create a bundle/executable to update the database

dotnet ef migrations bundle