Change entities and properties names in Database First

Question

I'm starting a new application that must use an existing database that use some naming conventions that are really annoying in .net (table names start with several trigrams that specify the business domain of the table, column names start with the tables trigram, trigrams are in uppercase and separated by underscores, etc.,).

What I'd like to do is to write a simple renaming rule (this is as simple as finding the last underscore and take everything after that) and apply it in Entity Framework. I don't really want to edit the names one by one in the editor, especially because the database might change and I don't want to do it several times.

I'm using Database First (as the database already exists and it is "the master"), and EF 4.x DbContext Generator and it works really great out of the box (with badly named classes and properties though).

I edited the T4 templates in order to rename the generated entities and properties, but when I try to perform any request, the DbContext object can't find the table that matches with the entity I'm trying to request and I get this exception :

The entity type [Entity Name] is not part of the model for the current context.

This is obvious why it doesn't find the table : nothing tells it how to match the entity name and the table as I changed it on the fly. I read that I can add instructions in the OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder) method but this is not used in Database First (and the default T4 template adds an exception in it, just in case).

So now I'm stuck, I don't know how to specify that matching.

Here are several ideas I have but not sure if it's correct or doable :

• Using the "plural / singular" API to change the name of the Entity ? Sounds like a dirty workaround. But it might work (didn't try though).
• Finding a way to edit the EDMX file on the fly.
• Editing the EDMX afterwards but it might complicate the process (edit in the designer, then execute a tool to alter the EDMX, then run custom tool to regenerate entities and DbContext... while today I just have to edit in the designer).
• Using Code First (as it seems easier to use different entity names than table names, through attributes or instructions in the DbContext class), but it sounds like it would not be more complicated to use it with an existing database.

Any idea ? Or did I miss something ?

Answer 1

You won't be able to use a T4 transform for this, as you want to change the content of the actual .edmx file to map your store entity names (with the obnoxious prefixes) to your sanitized conceptual entity names.

Instead, you're better off writing an application that takes an .edmx file as input and sanitizes the names under the conceptual model tag and modifies the mapping names to reflect the sanitized names. I understand that this is your third option and that you wanted to avoid this if possible, but this is the most straightforward way to go about it. Bear in mind that you'll only have to run this tool when you add new tables or columns.