I have been playing with EF Code First in ASP.NET MVC Web Applications. Up until now I have mainly been using Data Annotation Attributes on the model classes to help EF properly map those classes to tables in a SQL Server Database when using EF Code First. The Book Class I mentioned in the post, MvcScaffolding Nuget Package and EF Code First - Code Generation, is a good example of using the Data Annotations Attributes:
The immediate benefit of using Data Annotations as a declarative way to map EF Classes is that ASP.NET MVC supports Data Annotations for validation, too, which means if you have a simple ASP.NET MVC Web Application where you are binding Model Classes in the Controllers, you get your validation and your database mapping together using Data Annotations.
This is quite attractive, but if Data Annotations is not ideal to you, one also has the option of using the EF Fluent API. Once can model Book as shown below. Notice I override the OnModelCreating Method of DbContext and then use DbModelBuilder to specify various options, like HasKey, IsRequired, HasMaxLength, etc.
It certainly is nice to have options for both Data Annotations and a Fluent API when using EF Code First. I recommend trying both to see which one you like better.
David Hayden
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