Creating Custom Database Tables with Entity Framework
This tutorial will show you how to get started with creating custom database tables with the Entity Framework Core in Umbraco.
Introduction
Custom database tables let you store additional data in the Umbraco database that you don't want to be stored as normal content nodes.
Using custom tables can be great for many things such as storing massive amounts of data that you do not need to edit from the backoffice.
Decoupling part of your data from being managed by Umbraco as content is a way to achieve better performance for your site. It will no longer take up space in indexes and caches, and the Umbraco database.
Be aware that storing data in custom database tables is by default not manageable by Umbraco.
This means that if you need to edit or display this data, you need to implement the underlying functionality to support this.
The case is the same if you need this data to be transferred or kept synchronized between multiple sites or environments.
Data stored in custom tables are not supported by default by add-ons such as Umbraco Deploy and will not be deployable by default.
Prerequisite
An Umbraco project with content
EFCore CLI tool
Can be installed by running
dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef
in the terminal
The tutorial will show how to create custom database tables using a composer and a notification handler. With this pattern, you create and run a similar migration but trigger it in response to a notification handler.
Step 1: Create Model Class
First, create a class and add the following code:
Step 2: Create DBContext class
Now that we have the model, we create a DbContext
class so we can interact with the database and add the following code:
Step 3: Register the DbContext
We need to register the DbContext
to be able to use it in Umbraco.
To do this we can use this helpful extension method:
If you are using SQlite, replace UseSqlServer
with UseSqlite
.
Add the method in the
Program.cs
file:
We can then access the database via the BlogContext.
First, we need to migrate the database to add our tables. With EFCore, we can autogenerate the migrations with the terminal.
For package developers and not only, but in general as well, it's recommended to use the UseUmbracoDatabaseProvider
logic. This is because it will then figure out what the correct database is used:
Open your terminal and navigate to your project folder.
Generate the migration by running:
If you use another class library in your project to store models and DBContext classes such as Project.Core (Project.Web being the main startup Project):
Go to the project folder where you have your custom class library such as /Project.Core
Run the following script with the relative path to your main startup project Project.Web:
In this example, we have named the migration InitialCreate
. However, you can choose the name you like.
We've named the DbContext class BlogContext
, however, if you have renamed it to something else, make sure to also change it when running the command.
This might be confusing at first, as when working with EFCore you would inject your Context
class. You can still do that, it is however not the recommended approach in Umbraco.
In Umbraco, we use a concept called Scope
which is our implementation of the Unit of work
pattern. This ensures that we start a transaction when using the database. If the scope is not completed (for example when exceptions are thrown) it will roll it back.
Step 4: Create the notification handler
Next, we create the notification handler that will handle our migrations. We need to create a new class and add the following code to it:
Step 5: Register the notification handler
Lastly, we have to register the notification handler, with an IComposer
class and add the following code:
After registering the notification handler, build the project and take a look at the database and we can see our new table:
We now have some custom database tables in our database that we can work with through the Entity framework.
Going Further
Working with the data in the Custom Database Tables
To create, read, update, or delete data from your custom database tables, use the IEFCoreScopeProvider<T>
(T is your DbContext
class) to access the EFCore context.
The example below creates a UmbracoApiController
to be able to fetch and insert blog comments in a custom database table.
This example uses the
BlogComment
class, which is a database model. The recommended approach would be to map these over to a ViewModel instead, that way your database & UI layers are not coupled. Be aware that things like error handling and data validation have been omitted for brevity.The example uses UmbracoApiController which is obsolete in Umbraco 14 and will be removed in Umbraco 15.
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