Question

I’m using EF5 Code First, I have entities named XXXEntity which is based on Entity class, in Entity class there is Id property.

Here is the problem, normaly EF will create table for each entity named XXXEntities and having Id field. What I want is the table should named XXX (without Entities) and the Id should be XXXId. How to do that at once by using convention. I know I can override the table name, and Id name one by one. But it is a bit boring and not reusable, is there any better way to do that using convention or something on EF 5?

UPDATE

i read about custom code first conventions but not sure is this an out dated page or a non implemented feature. because i couldn’t found the Properties<T>() method on EF 5

Answer 1

No, you can’t do that with EF 5, your link is a future feature for EF 6 see here

but you can do that with reflection easily, for reusability you can make it as an extension method of DbModelBuilder, a bit slow but it solve your case. here what you can do:

public static class MyCustomNamingConvention
{
    public static void ToMyDatabaseNamingConvention(
        this DbModelBuilder mb, IEnumerable<Type> entities)
    {
        foreach (var entity in entities)
        {
            var mi = typeof(MyCustomNamingConvention)
                .GetMethod("MyNamingConvention")
                .MakeGenericMethod(entity);
            mi.Invoke(null, new object[] { mb });
        }
    }

    public static void MyNamingConvention<T>
        (DbModelBuilder mb) where T : Entity
    {
        var tableName = typeof(T).Name.Replace("Entity", "");
        mb.Entity<T>().HasKey(x => x.Id);
        mb.Entity<T>().Property(x => x.Id).HasColumnName(tableName + "Id");
        mb.Entity<T>().ToTable(tableName);
    }

}

Simply use it on your DBContext on OnModelCreating method

protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder mb)
{
    base.OnModelCreating(mb);
    mb.ToMyDatabaseNamingConvention(GetEntities());
}

Note:

• Remember to add appropriate namespace of the
  MyCustomNamingConvention.
• GetEntities() is a method to iterate your entity (remember to skip
  the Entity base class)