Entity Type Configuration
The API Template Pack guides developers down the path of implementing Fluent API to configure models. The reason being that this is the most powerful method of configuration and allows configuration to be specified without modifying your entity classes. Fluent API configuration has the highest precedence and will override conventions and data annotations.
What is BaseEntity
The BaseEntity is an abstract class that can be used to create a base entity object for all Models that provides all the typical base properties often required for a database entity
- ID - a uuid property
- Active - useful for soft deletes of rows
- Created - a datetime timestamp for a date and time an row was initially created
- Modified - a datetime timestamp for a date and time an row was initially created
Add Type Configurations
To create Entity Type Configuration by adding a new File to the Database -> Configurations
The API Template Pack provides the Model Configuration Template
BaseEntityTypeConfiguration
The API Template pack provides an easy to use BaseEntityTypeConfiguration abstract class which aims to simplify the creation of Entities that inherit from the BaseEntity class to enable the type configuration required on those classes so you don’t have to concern yourselves with it.
To make use of the BaseEntityTypeConfiguration is simply create a configuration class and inherit from the class the BaseEntityTypeConfiguration class.
In the example below we’ll be creating Posts confgiuration file for a Posts model. We can then use the override Configure to define our configuration, only concentrating on the core properties we want to define.
The BaseEntityTypeConfiguration will ensure our ID, Created, Modified and Active properties are automatically defined for us when we generate migrations.
public class PostsConfiguration : BaseEntityTypeConfiguration<Posts>
{
public override void Configure(EntityTypeBuilder<Posts> builder)
{
builder.ToTable(nameof(Posts).ToLower());
builder.Property(x => x.Title)
.HasColumnType(ColumnTypes.Varchar)
.HasMaxLength(255)
.IsRequired();
builder.Property(x => x.Summary)
.HasColumnType(ColumnTypes.Varchar)
.HasMaxLength(300)
.IsRequired();
builder.Property(x => x.Permalink)
.HasColumnType(ColumnTypes.Varchar)
.HasMaxLength(255)
.IsRequired();
builder.Property(x => x.Published)
.HasColumnType(ColumnTypes.Timestamp)
.IsRequired();
builder.HasOne(x => x.Source)
.WithMany(x => x.Posts)
.HasForeignKey(x => x.SourceId);
base.Configure(builder);
}
}