Docs Menu
Docs Home
/
Languages
/
C#
/
EF Core Provider
/
Fundamentals

Configure the EF Core Provider

On this page

  • Create a POCO
  • Create a DB Context Class
  • Use MongoDB
  • Example

In this guide, you will learn how to configure an application to use the MongoDB Entity Framework Core Provider. To learn how to set up a new project and install the EF Core Provider, see the Quick Start.

Create a POCO

Create a Plain old CLR/Class object, or POCO, to use as a model for your entity. A POCO is a simple class object that doesn't inherit features from any framework-specific base classes or interfaces.

The following code example shows how to create a POCO that represents a customer:

public class Customer
{
    public ObjectId Id { get; set; }
    public String Name { get; set; }
    public String Order { get; set; }
}

Tip

To learn more about POCOs, see the POCO guide in the .NET/C# Driver documentation.

Create a DB Context Class

To begin using Entity Framework Core, create a context class that derives from DBContext. The DbContext derived class instance represents a database session and is used to query and save instances of your entities.

The DBContext class exposes DBSet properties that specify the entities you can interact with while using that context.

The following example creates an instance of a DBContext derived class and specifies the Customer object as a DBSet property:

public class MyDbContext : DbContext
{
    public DbSet<Customer> Customers { get; init; }
    public MyDbContext(DbContextOptions options)
        : base(options)
    {
    }
    protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
    {
        base.OnModelCreating(modelBuilder);
        modelBuilder.Entity<Customer>().ToCollection("customers");
    }
}

The previous code example overrides the OnModelCreating() method. Overriding the OnModelCreating() method allows you to specify configuration details for your model and its properties. This example uses the ToCollection() method to specify that the Customer entities in your application map to the customers collection in MongoDB.

Use MongoDB

Once you've created a DBContext class, construct a DbContextOptionsBuilder object and call its UseMongoDB() method. This method takes two parameters: a MongoClient instance and the name of the database that stores the collections you are working with.

The UseMongoDB() method returns a DbContextOptions object. Pass the Options property of this object to the constructor for your DBContext class.

The following example shows how to construct a DBContext object in this way:

var mongoClient = new MongoClient("<Your MongoDB Connection URI>");
var dbContextOptions =
    new DbContextOptionsBuilder<MyDbContext>().UseMongoDB(mongoClient, "<Database Name");
var db = new MyDbContext(dbContextOptions.Options);

Tip

Creating a MongoClient

You can call methods from the MongoDB .NET/C# Driver when using the EF Core Provider. The previous example uses the MongoClient() method from the .NET/C# Driver to create a MongoDB client that connects to a MongoDB instance.

To learn more about using the MongoDB .NET/C# Driver to connect to MongoDB, see the Connection guide in the .NET/C# Driver documentation.

Example

The following code example shows how to configure the EF Core Provider and insert a document into the database:

using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore;
using MongoDB.Bson;
using MongoDB.Driver;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;
using MongoDB.EntityFrameworkCore.Extensions;
var mongoClient = new MongoClient("<Your MongoDB Connection URI>");
var dbContextOptions =
    new DbContextOptionsBuilder<MyDbContext>().UseMongoDB(mongoClient, "<Database Name>");
var db = new MyDbContext(dbContextOptions.Options);
// Add a new customer and save it to the database
db.Customers.Add(new Customer() { name = "John Doe", Order = "1 Green Tea" });
db.SaveChanges();
public class Customer
{
    public ObjectId Id { get; set; }
    public String Name { get; set; }
    public String Order { get; set; }
}
public class MyDbContext : DbContext
{
    public DbSet<Customer> Customers { get; init; }
    public MyDbContext(DbContextOptions options)
        : base(options)
    {
    }
    protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
    {
        base.OnModelCreating(modelBuilder);
        modelBuilder.Entity<Customer>().ToCollection("customers");
    }
}

Back

Fundamentals

Next

Query Data