Entity Framework Core & Dot Net CLI Commands

Entity Framework Core & Dot Net CLI Commands

The .NET command-line interface (CLI) is a cross-platform toolchain for developing, building, running, and publishing .NET applications.

Entity Framework (EF) Core is a lightweight, extensible, open source and cross-platform version of the popular Entity Framework data access technology.

This is comprehensive list of all useful commands for EF Core & .Net CLI development.

Entity Framework Core Commands :

dotnet ef can be installed as either a global or local tool. Most developers prefer installing dotnet ef as a global tool using the following command

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef

To verify that EF Core CLI tools are correctly installed

dotnet ef

To add your first migration, EF Core will create a migration named InitialCreate:

dotnet ef migrations add InitialCreate

To update the database to the last migration or to a specified migration.

dotnet ef database update

To generate code for a DbContext and entity types for a database. In order for this command to generate an entity type, the database table must have a primary key. You can pass name of connection string as well instead of complete string.

dotnet ef dbcontext scaffold "Server=.\SQLEXPRESS;Database=MyDB;Trusted_Connection=True;" Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer -o Models

To generates a SQL script from migrations.

dotnet ef migrations script

Dot Net CLI Commands :

To check detailed information about a .NET installation and the machine environment, such as the current operating system

dotnet --info

To check installed .NET SDK versions

dotnet --list-sdks

To check available templates to be run using dotnet new

dotnet new --list

To create a new dotnet core project using the provided template

dotnet new <template>
dotnet new console --framework net6.0 // Example

To restore packages or to update existing packages

dotnet restore

To build the solution

dotnet build solution.sln

To add / remove a NuGet package reference

dotnet add package Newtonsoft.json
dotnet remove package Newtonsoft.json

To run dot net core project

dotnet run