Question

I am working on a base class for my entity framework database context classes. In the base class I need access to the DbContext and in the derived class I need access to the derived DbContext. At the moment I have the following code:

 public abstract class BaseClass: IDisposable   
{
    protected abstract DbContext BaseContext { get; }

    public void Dispose()
    {
        if (BaseContext != null)
        {
            BaseContext.Dispose();
        }
    }
}

public class DerivedClass : BaseClass
{
    DerivedContext context; // public class DerivedContext: DbContext

    protected override DbContext BaseContext 
    {
        get
        {
            return context;
        }           
    }
}

Is this a correct approach?

Answer 1

I would suggest something more like

public abstract class BaseClass<TContext> : IDisposable 
    where TContext : DbContext
{
    //not abstract
    protected TContext Context { get; private set; }
}

public class DerivedClass : BaseClass<DerivedContext>
{
    ....
}

In your base class you can access all of the member of DbContext and in your DerivedClass, you can access all of the members of DerviedContext without the need to cast.