Debugging Package Manager Console Update-Database Seed Method

Question

I wanted to debug the Seed() method in my Entity Framework database configuration class when I run Update-Database from the Package Manager Console

Answer 1

A cleaner solution (I guess this requires EF 6) would IMHO be to call update-database from code:

var configuration = new DbMigrationsConfiguration<TContext>();
var databaseMigrator = new DbMigrator(configuration);
databaseMigrator.Update();

This allows you to debug the Seed method.

You may take this one step further and construct a unit test (or, more precisely, an integration test) that creates an empty test database, applies all EF migrations, runs the Seed method, and drops the test database again:

var configuration = new DbMigrationsConfiguration<TContext>();
Database.Delete("TestDatabaseNameOrConnectionString");

var databaseMigrator = new DbMigrator(configuration);
databaseMigrator.Update();

Database.Delete("TestDatabaseNameOrConnectionString");

But be careful not to run this against your development database!