Question

I have a database and a C# class library which acts as a repository for accessing objects from the database using Entity Framework. When trying to use this repository assembly in other projects I am running into difficulty; My working assumption is that this it due to the Connection String as I am getting the following error:

The specified named connection is either not found in the configuration, not intended to be used with the EntityClient provider, or not valid.

I have added an App1.config file to the project and added the same connection string I had successfully used when creating the database:

<add name="EDSEntities" connectionString="metadata=res://*/Model1.csdl|res://*/Model1.ssdl|res://*/Model1.msl;provider=System.Data.SQLite;provider connection string='data source=&quot;C:\Documents and Settings\hmay\My Documents\My Projects\Timetabler\DataSets\EDS.db&quot;;foreign keys=true'" providerName="System.Data.EntityClient" />

…. but it doesn’t work. I don’t understand the connection string very well and wondered if there is something else here I might need to tweak?

Regards

Answer 1

Adding app1.config would not do anything. App.config and web.config are specially named files and they need to be named exactly that. However if you use your library in multiple apps i would refactor it.

Change the DbContext class to have a single constructor that takes a connection string and push the responsibility for creating the connection string into the app rather than the library. It is not good to have a class library that expects your app to have a particular named entry in the connection strings section of its config.