Entity Framework documentation

Entity Framework Core is a modern object-database mapper for .NET. It supports LINQ queries, change tracking, updates, and schema migrations. EF Core works with many databases, including SQL Database (on-premises and Azure), SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Azure Cosmos DB.

Get Started

Entity Framework Core

Learn

Persist and retrieve relational data with Entity Framework Core

What's new

Releases and platforms

Overview

Supported Databases

Overview

Choose a version that is right for you

Reference

API reference browser

Develop with Entity Framework Core

Develop your first app

• .NET Core console app accessing SQLite with EF Core
• ASP.NET Core Razor Pages web app accessing SQL Server LocalDB or SQLite with EF Core
• ASP.NET Core MVC web app accessing SQL Server with EF Core
• WPF .NET Core app accessing SQLite with EF Core
• Xamarin mobile app accessing SQLite with EF Core

Supported databases

• SQL Server
• SQLite
• PostgreSQL
• MySQL and MariaDB
• Cosmos DB SQL API
• In memory (testing)
• All current Database Providers

Platforms

• All supported platforms
• ASP.NET Core Razor Pages
• ASP.NET Core MVC
• Blazor Server
• Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
• Windows Forms (WinForms)
• Xamarin

Fundamentals

• Connection strings
• Logging
• Connection resiliency
• Testing
• Configure a DbContext
• Nullable reference types
• Collations and case sensitivity

Create a model

• Overview
• Entity types
• Entity properties
• Keys
• Generated values
• Relationships
• Data seeding
• Owned entity types
• Keyless entity types

Query

• Overview
• Client vs. server evaluation
• Tracking vs. no-tracking
• Complex query operators
• Load related data
• Asynchronous queries
• Raw SQL queries
• User-defined function mapping
• Global query filters
• Comparisons with null values in queries

Manage database schemas

• Overview
• Migration overview
• Migration of team environments
• Migration - custom operations
• Migration - Use a separate project
• Migration - multiple providers
• Migration - custom history table
• Create and drop APIs
• Reverse engineering (scaffolding)

Save data

• Overview
• Basic save
• Related data
• Cascade delete
• Concurrency conflicts
• Transactions
• Asynchronous saving
• Disconnected entities

Command-line reference

• Overview
• Package Manager Console (Visual Studio)
• .NET Core CLI
• Design-time DbContext creation
• Design-time services

Previous Versions

• Entity Framework 6

Contribute to Entity Framework docs. Read our contributor guide.