Entity Framework + AutoMapper ( Entity to DTO and DTO to Entity )

Question

I\'ve got some problems using EF with AutoMapper. =/

for example :

I\'ve got 2 related entities ( Customers and Orders ) and they\'re DTO classes :

Answer 1

AutoMapper is very expressive when it comes to mapping error. read the exception message carefully.

another important thing is to remember to call Mapper.AssertConfigurationIsValid(); after creating the mappings. it gives an error if the mapping is wrong, thus preventing an exception later in the application runtime.

Answer 2

Your problem is because Automapper loses the EntityKey associated with the record. As the EntityFramework does not by default handle POCO's (Plain Old CLR Object)

Jay Zimmerman has a good example here of how to handle this from is. gd /4NIcj Also from Jaroslaw Kowalski (part of the EF team I believe ) has this example for using POCO's within EF, which may translate well to use with Automapper (I've not yet had a chance to try it) : http://blogs.msdn.com/jkowalski/archive/2008/09/09/persistence-ignorance-poco-adapter-for-entity-framework-v1.aspx