Entity Framework getting an sql connection

Question

In the light of Closing connections explicitly in Entity Framework and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb738582%28v=vs.90%29.aspx it seems that I should be using the con

Answer 1

In EF5 (changed for EF6) the following would return the connection:

var connection = ((EntityConnection)context.Connection).StoreConnection;

If you are using EF in a right way you will probably never need to get inner db connection.

Answer 2

You could use the following as well. I wanted to inject some Dapper.NET into a existing project that already had Entity framework entity context so I created the following:

public class EFConnectionAccessor : IDisposable
{
    private readonly SqlConnection sqlConnection;
    private readonly MyEntities entities;

    public EFConnectionAccessor()
    {
        entities = new MyEntities();

        var entityConnection = entities.Connection as EntityConnection;

        if (entityConnection != null)
        {
            sqlConnection = entityConnection.StoreConnection as SqlConnection;
        }
    }

    public SqlConnection connection
    {
        get
        {
            sqlConnection.Open();
            return sqlConnection;
        }
    }

    public void Dispose()
    {
        sqlConnection.Close();
        sqlConnection.Dispose();
        entities.Dispose();
    }
}

Called using

using (SqlConnection sqlConnection = new EFConnectionAccessor().connection)
{
 // ADO.NET CODE HERE - Or in my case dapper.net
}

Answer 3

the DataContext will allow you to call your Entity Objects right off of your DataContext reference, abstracting away all of the details of the underlying connection logistics.

Answer 4

I used next code to getting connection (Entity Framework 5.0):

var connection = Context.Database.Connection;

Answer 5

var efConnectionStringBuilder = new EntityConnectionStringBuilder(efConnectionString);
string sqlConnectionString = efConnectionStringBuilder.ProviderConnectionString;

Answer 6

I found out that the magic lies in ExecuteStoreCommand()

  new AdventureEntities().ExecuteStoreCommand(
        @"    UPDATE Users
              SET lname = @lname 
              WHERE Id = @id",
        new SqlParameter("lname", lname), new SqlParameter("id", id));

Then there is no need for an explicit Connection, it actually made the code a lot cleaner. The one-liner above replaced all of the following code

  using (SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection("Persist Security Info=False;Integrated Security=true;Initial Catalog=Remember;server=(local)"))
  {
    con.Open();
    using (SqlCommand cmd = con.CreateCommand())
    {
      cmd.CommandText = @"
          UPDATE Users
          SET lname = @lname 
          WHERE Id = @id";
      cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("lname", lname);
      cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("id", id);
      cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
    }
  }