Question

I want to use Entity Framework without app.config file.

I want to define a string variable Connection String in my code and use that to connect to the database.

Please show me the way if it is possible.

Answer 1

You’re not mentioning what approach you’re using (database-first, model-first, code-first) – but basically, in the end, you need to define a string variable and assign it a valid EF connection string

string myConnectionString = "...(define a valid EF connection string here)......";

Example for database-first approach:

string myConnectionString = @"metadata=.\Model1.csdl|.\Model1.ssdl|.\Model1.msl;provider=System.Data.SqlClient;provider connection string="";data source=.;initial catalog=test;integrated security=True;multipleactiveresultsets=True;App=EntityFramework""";

and then use that to create your ObjectContext (database- and model-first) or DbContext (code-first)

using(ObjectContext ctx = new ObjectContext(myConnectionString))
{
    // do your EF magic here.....
}

But quite honestly – I think this is a really bad idea since this makes it impossible for you to move your application to another machine – no one else can install and run this, since the connection string is hard-coded into your C# code….. the whole point of having config files is so that you can change / adapt things like connection strings so that they are not tied to a single machine/location but can be adapted to the particular needs of a given user / customer….