Running DNX (EF7) database migration on Azure

Question

I've been running a MVC project with ASP.NET 4.6 and EF7 locally and everything works fine. I ran the dnx . ef migration Initial commands to create the database tables, and everything ran fine. The app works.

With Azure I have one problem, I can't seem to run the dnx . ef migration command so my SQL database is empty. I've debugged Startup.cs and the connection string is correctly retrieved, but the tables are not there.

I used the Publish option in Visual Studio 2015 to deploy to my Azure Web App.

How can I run this command on my web app? Is there another way to generate the database?

Thanks

Answer 1

It seems that the EF team has eliminated the infamous database initializers and offers a more versatile method for that on version 7.

Just use these methods in the pipeline before any call to the database,

yourDbContext.Database.EnsureCreated();

to create the database in case it doesn't exists and

yourDbContext.Database.Migrate();

to apply migrations (if you use this feature later). Both methods above also have an asynchronous version.

In my solution I have created an static class that I use to initialize the database and seed it with some data. I call the Seed method from the Configure method in the Startup class when some condition is met.