Seed Database at Application Start - ASP MVC 3 and EF

Question

For some reason I cannot get my application to seed the database with some test data when the application starts up.

Order of execution:

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Answer 1

First off, all your EF code looks fine.

The problem is, you have initialize your database. Otherwise EF will wait until you access it in some way to initialize it.

You could navigate your website as much as you want without the database even starting up, if none of the pages access the data.

If you want to force the database to initialize when the application starts, do something like this:

using (var db = new LocatorContext())
{
    db.Database.Initialize(true);
}

I usually i create a static class like:

public static class LocatorInitializationHandler
{
    public static void Initialize()
    {
        // if you want to use your initializer
        Database.SetInitializer(new CreateInitializer()); 

        using (var db = new LocatorContext())
        {
            db.Database.Initialize(true);
        }
    }
}

Which i can then call from App_start:

//Global.asax.cs
protected void Application_Start()
{
    LocatorInitializationHandler.Initialize();

    AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();
    RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);
    RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
}