Question

i am working on a legacy oracle database that uses character literals T and F in the database for its boolean values however i would like the Entity property to reflect a proper boolen value is there a wy to convert this value when the model is binding it is a read only database so inserts are not important

Answer 1

I would suggest wrapping up or extending the generating type to add this sort of functionality …

entity framework will generate objects that basically match what the data in the database tables looks like so if you have a table called “Contacts” you’ll get an object called “Contacts”, I think (although i could be wrong) the classes are defined as partial so it generates something like …

public partial class Contact { 
  string BoolReally { 
    get; set;
  };
}

you then add a new property like this …

public partial class Contact { 
  bool MyBool get { 
    return (legacyValue == "T") ? true : false;
  }
}

Now when you declare a Contact instance just fish the value from “MyBool” instead.

…

That’s extending, wrapping up would be something like this …

public class MyContact {
     public Contact Contact;
     public bool MyBool { 
         get { 
             return Contact.BoolAsString; 
         }
     }
}

similar thing … just need to consume the object slightly differently 🙂