How to set default value for POCO's in EF CF?

Question

In Entity Framework Code First approach, how do you set a default value for a property in the POCO\'s EntityConfiguration class?

public class Person
{
    pu         


        

Answer 1

I'm not sure as of what version of EF this becomes available, but as of version 5 for sure you can handle this. Just set a default value of GetDate() on the column in SQL, either in TSQL or the designer, then setup your EF classes as follows:

public class Person
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public DateTime CreatedOn { get; set; }
}

public class PersonConfiguration : EntityConfiguration<Person>
{
    public PersonConfiguration()
    {
        Property(p => p.Id).IsIdentity();
        Property(p => p.Name).HasMaxLength(100);

        this.Property(p => p.CreatedOn ).HasDatabaseGeneratedOption(System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.Schema.DatabaseGeneratedOption.Computed);
    }
}

Note that you don't need to make the database column nullable, or the POCO property.