Force Entity Framework 6 (EF6) to use nvarchar(MAX)

Question

I thought this would be easy, but...

How do you force EF6 to use nvarchar(MAX)?

I've tried:

[Column(TypeName = "nvarchar(MAX)")]

and

[Column(TypeName = "nvarchar")]
[MaxLength()]

and

modelBuilder.Entity<Date>().Property(o => o.test).HasColumnType("nvarchar(MAX)");

I'm using EF6.2.0 and SQL2014 Express

Answer 1

If you do not specify a length then EF Code First defaults to nvarchar(max), so if you specify a Name column:

public string Name { get; set; }

you will get an nvarchar(max) column.

If you need to specify a length, say 100 chars then you would specify the column in code:

[MaxLength(50)]
public string Name { get; set; }

If you need to specify varchar rather than nvarchar you would use this:

[Column(TypeName = "VARCHAR")]
[MaxLength(50)]
public string Name { get; set; }

see Code First Conventions, Code First Data Annotations and Column Annotations