Using Effort with EF6 in a DB First approach

I too had a bit of a difficult time in trying to get Effort to work with a DB first, or model first as it's also known, approach. This is what I did to make it work:

• Download the Effort.EF6 nuget package
• Add the effort.provider to the entity-framework config section:

    <entityFramework>
        <defaultConnectionFactory type="System.Data.Entity.Infrastructure.LocalDbConnectionFactory, EntityFramework">
      <parameters>
        <parameter value="mssqllocaldb" />
      </parameters>
    </defaultConnectionFactory>
    <providers>
      <provider invariantName="System.Data.SqlClient" type="System.Data.Entity.SqlServer.SqlProviderServices, EntityFramework.SqlServer" />
      <provider invariantName="Effort.Provider" type="Effort.Provider.EffortProviderServices,Effort" />
    </providers>
  </entityFramework>

• Replace the sql-provider with the Effort-provider in the connection-string:

<connectionStrings>
    <add name="testDb" providerName="Effort.Provider" connectionString="metadata=res://*/StaginDB.csdl|res://*/StaginDB.ssdl|res://*/StaginDB.msl;provider=System.Data.SqlClient;provider connection string=&quot;data source=testDB;initial catalog=foobaroo;integrated security=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=True;App=EntityFramework&quot;"  />
  </connectionStrings>

• If your model-first context doesn't offer a constructor you can inject a connection into, you can modify your tt-template to do so:

<#=Accessibility.ForType(container)#> partial class <#=code.Escape(container)#> : DbContext
{

    // I added this constructor so I could inject a db-connection into the context:
    public <#=code.Escape(container)#>(System.Data.Common.DbConnection dbConnection, bool contextOwnsConnection) 
        : base(dbConnection, contextOwnsConnection)
        {
    }

    // Original constructor
    public <#=code.Escape(container)#>()
        : base("name=<#=container.Name#>")
    {
<#
if (!loader.IsLazyLoadingEnabled(container))
{
#>
        this.Configuration.LazyLoa.... etc. etc.

• And we can now use that constructor to instantiate a connection, and an Effort-based in-memory db-context based on this connection:

System.Data.Common.DbConnection connection = Effort.EntityConnectionFactory.CreateTransient("name=KPDBSTAGINGEntities");
TestDbContext testDbContext = new testDbContext(connection, false);

TestDbContext.your-entity.add( new your-entity() { etc. tec. });
TestDbContext.SaveChanges();

Hope this helps.

P.S. Others have had to add a db-provider-factory section to their config. This was not required for me, but maybe for you:

<system.data>
    <DbProviderFactories>
      <add name="Effort.Provider" invariant="Effort.Provider" description="Effort.Provider" type="Effort.Provider.EffortProviderFactory,Effort" />
    </DbProviderFactories>
  </system.data>