Entity Framework Core RC2 table name pluralization

Question

There is no convention for this as of EF RC2 build. This is from EF Core team:

In past pre-release of EF Core, the table name for an entity was the
same as the entity class name. In RC2 we now use the name of the DbSet
property. If no DbSet property is defined for the given entity type,
then the entity class name is used.

Now if you want to revert back to the RC1 naming conventions for tables, you have 3 ways to go with:

1. Choosing Singular Names for DbSet Properties:

One way is to singularize your DbSet property names (which I don’t like). Say for example you have a Book entity and you want to map to a Book table:

public DbSet<Book> Book { get; set; }

2. Using ToTable() Fluent API:

You can of course always use fluent API to override any convention in place and dictate the table name to whatever you want:

modelBuilder.Entity<Book>().ToTable("Book");

3. Writing a Custom Convention:

Just because EF Core RC2 does not have a convention for this, it doesn’t mean we can’t write our own. To do so, first we need to create an extension method on ModelBuilder object:

using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Metadata.Internal;

public static class ModelBuilderExtensions 
{
    public static void RemovePluralizingTableNameConvention(this ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
    {
        foreach (IMutableEntityType entity in modelBuilder.Model.GetEntityTypes())
        {
            entity.Relational().TableName = entity.DisplayName();
        }
    }
}

And then we simply call it from the OnModelCreating method on our DbContext object:

protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
{
    modelBuilder.RemovePluralizingTableNameConvention();
}

On Closing:

I don’t like plural table names and I like the last option better than the others and went with that. That said, it’s my personal opinion and other developers might find any of these 3 ways more favorable than the others and choose to go with that 🙂

Leave a Comment Cancel reply