Model and generate code for Entity Framework v6, Entity Framework Core 2.0 and 2.1

Install with NuGet from the Visual Studio Marketplace

Complete documentation in the project's documentation site

This Visual Studio 2017 extension adds a new file type (.efmodel) that allows for fast, easy and, most importantly, visual design of persistent classes. Inheritance, unidirectional and bidirectional associations are all supported. Enumerations are also included in the visual model, as is the ability to add text blocks to explain potentially arcane parts of your design.

While giving you complete control over how the code is generated you'll be able to, out of the box, create sophisticated, consistent and correct Entity Framework code that can be regenerated when your model changes. And, since the code is written using partial classes, any changes you make to your generated code are retained across subsequent generations.

If you are used to the EF visual modeling that comes with Visual Studio, you'll be pretty much at home. The goal was to duplicate at least those features and, in addition, add all the little things that should have been there. Things like:

• the ability to show and hide parts of the model
• easy customization of generated output
• class and enumeration nodes that can be colored to visually group the model
• different concerns being generated into different subdirectories (entities, enums, dbcontext)
• entities by default generated as partial classes so the default code can be easily modified
• string length, index flags, required attributes and other properties being available in the designer

and many other nice-to-have bits.

Code generation is completely customizable via T4 templates. The tool installs templates that target both EF6 and EFCore, and generate both a code-first DbContext class and POCO entity classes. The EF6 template's DbContext code is written to allow consumption in ASP.Net Core in addition to any other project type, so you'll have flexibility in your development.

You can read more about how to use the designer in the Documentation site.

1.2.6.12

• Bugfix to remove unnecessary permission requests to push attributes down when deleting leaf nodes in an inheritance tree
• Fix to workaround Visual Studio pulling in the wrong System.Net.Http reference. (See https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/296293/vs2017-1575-ignores-the-hintpath-and-take-the-syst.html)
• Add EFModel.xsd to Visual Studio schema cache in order to avoid editor warnings for missing schema
• Fixed template issue for non-English-language systems (where Microsoft Pluralization Service is unavailable)
• Added compartment for association sources so Bidirectional associations would show up

1.2.6.11

• Tweak to force association end roles to be correct when roles or multiplicities change
• Attribute elements' "String Properties" don't appear unless the attribute is a string
• Attribute elements' "Indexed Unique" property doesn't appear unless the attribute has "Indexed" equal to "True"
• Fixed background color on attribute glyph in model explorer
• Fixed foreground color on enum value glyph on design surface
• Hid comments in model explorer because they just cluttered up the tree.
• [NEW] Associations now show up in their own compartment in a class on the design surface. Note that this changes the height of your elements, so the first time opening a model you may have to tweak your esthetics a bit.
• [NEW] Double-clicking a class or enum on the designer opens the generated code file, if it exists. If it doesn't exist, you're asked if you'd like to generate the model then, if you do, it tries again.
  • Known issue: EFCore/.NETCore and EFCore/.NETFramework projects won't ask to generate the code if they can't open the file; they just fail silently. All other EF/.NET combinations behave appropriately.