Is there a way to have class names be different from your table names?

Question

We are using a database created several years ago, and would like to keep the table names the same.

All of our tables are named like: "tbl_Orders" but we would like the class names for the models / controllers / etc. to be Orders / OrdersController / etc. We are mapping the classes to our tables using Entity Framework.

Sorry if this has been asked before, I tried searching but came up empty handed...

Solution:

After some back and forth with Scott Chamberlain, we came to the conclusion that both answers are correct. I went ahead and marked Masoud's answer as accepted, because that is the route I went. Thank's to everyone who helped (especially Scott).

Answer 1

You can use the Table attribute or the fluent api to map between table names in your database and class names

[Table("tbl_Blogs")] 
public class Blog

3rd party edit

Entity framework core offers the same option to map tablenames or columns

• map tables names
• map column names

The mapping can be done by using attributes

[Table("blogs")]
public class Blog
{        
    [Column("blog_id")]
    public int BlogId { get; set; }
    public string Url { get; set; }
}

or by using the fluent api

protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
{
    modelBuilder.Entity<Blog>()
        .ToTable("blogs");
    modelBuilder.Entity<Blog>()
        .Property(b => b.BlogId)
        .HasColumnName("blog_id");
}

Answer 2

You can use following code in your DbContext to map all your entities to your tables:

protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder)
{
   // TableNameConvention
     modelBuilder.Types()
                 .Configure(entity => 
                            entity.ToTable("tbl_" + entity.ClrType.Name));

     base.OnModelCreating(modelBuilder);
}