EF-EFDesigner

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Entity Framework Designer - VS2019 Version

Entity Framework visual design surface and code-first code generation for EF6, EFCore and beyond.


VS2019 msawczyn/EFDesigner: Entity Framework visual design surface and code-first code generation for EF6, Core and beyond (github.com)

VS2022 msawczyn/EFDesigner2022: Entity Framework visual design surface and code-first code generation for EF6, Core and beyond (github.com)

This Visual Studio 2022 extension is the easiest way to add a consistently correct Entity Framework (EF6 or EFCore) model to your project.

It's an opinionated code generator, adding a new file type (.efmodel) that allows for fast, easy and, most importantly, visual design of persistent classes. Inheritance, unidirectional and bidirectional associations are all supported. Enumerations are also included in the visual model, as is the ability to add text blocks to explain potentially arcane parts of your design.

While giving you complete control over how the code is generated you'll be able to create, out of the box, sophisticated, consistent and correct Entity Framework code that can be regenerated when your model changes. And, since the code is written using partial classes, any additions you make to your generated code are retained across subsequent generations. The designer doesn't need to be present to use the code that's generated - it generates standard C#, using the code-first, fluent API - so the tool doesn't become a dependency to your project.

If you are used to the EF visual modeling that comes with Visual Studio, you'll be pretty much at home. The goal was to duplicate at least those features and, in addition, add all the little things that should have been there. Things like:

  • importing entities from C# source, or existing DbContext definitions (including their entities) from compiled EF6 or EFCore assemblies
  • multiple views of your model to highlight important aspects of your design
  • the ability to show and hide parts of the model
  • easy customization of generated output by editing or even replacing the T4 templates
  • entities by default generated as partial classes so the generated code can be easily extended
  • class and enumeration nodes that can be colored to visually group the model
  • different concerns being generated into different subdirectories (entities, enums, dbcontext)
  • string length, index flags, required attributes and other properties being available in the designer

and many other nice-to-have bits.

Code generation is completely customizable via T4 templates. The tool installs templates that target both EF6 and EFCore, and generate both a code-first DbContext class and POCO entity classes. The DbContext code is written to allow consumption in ASP.Net Core in addition to any other project type, so you'll have flexibility in your development.

Note: This tool does not reverse engineer from the database (i.e., "database-first"). Microsoft has provided tools for that, and there are other, well-maintained opensourced projects that provide that functionality as well.

You can read more about how to use the designer in the Documentation site.

Migrating from VS2019 You'll have to change a line in your model's .tt file to accommodate how Visual Studio 2022 handles library imports in text templates.

Change line 5, which reads

#><#@ assembly name="EnvDTE"

to be

#><#@ assembly name="Microsoft.VisualStudio.Interop"

That's it. Of course, if you customized any of the standard templates, you'll have to go through the customizations the same way you've always done and bump your changes up against the new templates. Not much has changed that didn't absolutely need to be changed due to the VS2022 differences, but there may be a bugfix or two your customized templates don't have. But, hey ... if you've been customizing the templates, you know the drill, right?

Shout out and a big thanks

to  for providing free development tools to support this project.

Change Log

4.2.1

  • Added support for EFCore7
  • Added ability to import EFCore7 assemblies
  • Added ability to use property types not available in the select list, along with a global option enabling this feature in Tools/Options/Entity Framework Visual Editor (see #28)
  • Added support for DateOnly and TimeOnly types in EFCore 6+
  • Added ability to specify decimal precision in EFCore5+ projects
  • Fix for View->Other Windows->Entity Model Explorer not working (see #29)
  • Fix error in code generation template for EFCore5+ projects

4.2.0

  • Added ability to import EFCore6 assemblies
  • Added database default values to properties (see #15)
  • Extension now obeys Visual Studio theme colors (see #9)
  • Added Persistent property to ModelClass to generate [NotMapped] when false. (see #17)
  • Entity constructors with required navigation properties are now generated with either the required navigation target or its foreign key property, if available (see #21)
  • Fixed other Entity Framework assembly imports that broke with VS2022 moving to 64-bit (see #14)
  • Fixed problem with generated Timestamp concurrency check (see #20)

4.1.2

  • Added ability to create association classes via drag and drop of an entity onto a bidirectional many-to-many association
  • Restored ability to open secondary diagrams
  • Compiler update to Visual Studio v17.1.0 fixes missing designer menu items

4.0.1

  • Added validations preventing use of temporal tables in unsupported scenarios

4.0.0

  • VS2022 extension
  • Added support for EFCore6
  • Added support for temporal tables

Earlier changes at the VS2019 version.