tabs ↹ over ␣ ␣ ␣ spaces

by Jiří {x2} Činčura

Changing default schema dynamically in pre-Entity Framework 6

11 Jun 2013 3 mins Entity Framework

If you’re using 3rd party database where dbo is not the default you might hit the wall with default conventions. Why? Because even if you didn’t configured the schema by calling EntityTypeConfiguration.ToTable overload it will result in dbo. It’s simply hard-coded there. Entity Framework 6 solves this by adding DbModelBuilder.HasDefaultSchema property. Or you can write your own convention. In time of writing the version 6 is in beta stage, hence probably not something you should use in production. But there’s still a way.

If there’s an overload where I can specify the schema explicitly I can call it, right? But that’s a lot of work. Especially is you’re relying heavily on “conventions”. But the heavy work can be done by machine right? Because a lot of APIs we need to dive in is not public and (also partly because of generics) we need to dive into reflection. Not good for readability. But, …, could be worse. 😉

static class SchemaRewriteHelper
{
	const BindingFlags RewriteSchemaBindingFlags = BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic;

	public static void RewriteSchema(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder, string schema)
	{
		var modelBuilderType = modelBuilder.GetType();
		var modelConfiguration = modelBuilderType.GetProperty("ModelConfiguration", RewriteSchemaBindingFlags).GetValue(modelBuilder);
		var activeEntityConfigurations = (IList)modelConfiguration.GetType().GetProperty("ActiveEntityConfigurations", RewriteSchemaBindingFlags).GetValue(modelConfiguration);
		foreach (var item in activeEntityConfigurations)
		{
			RewriteSchemaForEntityTypeConfiguration(item, schema);
		}
	}

	static void RewriteSchemaForEntityTypeConfiguration(object entityTypeConfiguration, string schema)
	{
		// not bulletproof, but better than nothing
		if (entityTypeConfiguration.GetType().Name != "EntityTypeConfiguration")
			throw new ArgumentException();

		var entityTypeConfigurationType = entityTypeConfiguration.GetType();
		var entityMappingConfigurations = ((IList)entityTypeConfigurationType.GetField("_entityMappingConfigurations", RewriteSchemaBindingFlags).GetValue(entityTypeConfiguration));
		foreach (var entityMappingConfiguration in entityMappingConfigurations)
		{
			var navigationPropertyConfigurations = (IDictionary)entityTypeConfigurationType.GetField("_navigationPropertyConfigurations", RewriteSchemaBindingFlags).GetValue(entityTypeConfiguration);
			foreach (var val in navigationPropertyConfigurations.Values)
			{
				var associationMappingConfiguration = val.GetType().GetProperty("AssociationMappingConfiguration", RewriteSchemaBindingFlags).GetValue(val);
				if (associationMappingConfiguration == null)
					continue;
				var tableNameAssociation = associationMappingConfiguration.GetType().GetField("_tableName", RewriteSchemaBindingFlags).GetValue(associationMappingConfiguration);
				var schemaAssociation = (string)tableNameAssociation.GetType().GetProperty("Schema").GetValue(tableNameAssociation);
				var nameAssociation = (string)tableNameAssociation.GetType().GetProperty("Name").GetValue(tableNameAssociation);
				ToTableHelper(associationMappingConfiguration, nameAssociation, schemaAssociation ?? schema);
			}
			var tableNameEntity = entityMappingConfiguration.GetType().GetProperty("TableName").GetValue(entityMappingConfiguration);
			var schemaEntity = (string)tableNameEntity.GetType().GetProperty("Schema").GetValue(tableNameEntity);
			var nameEntity = (string)tableNameEntity.GetType().GetProperty("Name").GetValue(tableNameEntity);
			ToTableHelper(entityTypeConfiguration, nameEntity, schemaEntity ?? schema);
		}
	}

	static void ToTableHelper(object configuration, string name, string schema)
	{
		configuration.GetType().GetMethod("ToTable", new[] { typeof(string), typeof(string) }).Invoke(configuration, new[] { name, schema });
	}
}

You can pass the DbModelBuilder into the RewriteSchema method in OnModelCreating and let the magic happen. Because usual the EntityTypeConfiguration is not used internally I’m hacking slightly different objects. But the idea is the same. Get all mapped entities, get the schema name and table name. And call ToTable with defined schema if it was previously null. Also do it for tables used for M:N associations. With M:N associations there’s a small glitch. These are probably configured even more dynamically and hence if not configured explicitly the schema will not be rewritten, because at this stage I was not able to spot where I can find it for rewriting (I because my case contained explicit M:N configuration I was not too eager to dig deeper 😎).

Again no warranty. It worked in my case for application with fairly big model with about 100 tables/entities. 😉

Profile Picture Jiří Činčura is .NET, C# and Firebird expert. He focuses on data and business layers, language constructs, parallelism, databases and performance. For almost two decades he contributes to open-source, i.e. FirebirdClient. He works as a senior software engineer for Microsoft. Frequent speaker and blogger at www.tabsoverspaces.com.