Question

In LINQ to SQL you can inspect the underlying meta-model of a data context via its Mapping property.

Is there an equivalent or close-enough pattern in EF Code First for inspecting or manipulating model configuration, given a DbContext instance?

I know you can use the Fluent API to configure the mappings up front, but I’m talking about general inspection of a model from outside code using an API, without needing to have object instances to work with (other than the DbContext, of course).

Answer 1

DbContext itself doesn’t provide access to meta model. You must convert DbContext to ObjectContext by using:

ObjectContext objectContext = ((IObjectContextAdapter)dbContext).ObjectContext;

After that you can access objectContext.MetadataWorkspace but the workspace itself was not designed for direct usage – API is highly unfriendly and it is read only.