MVC4 Scaffolding Add Controller gives error "Unable to retrieve metadata..."

Jack Ukleja picture Jack Ukleja · Aug 28, 2012 · Viewed 45.4k times · Source

I'm using RTM version of Windows 8 and VS 2012 Ultimate. I have a MVC4 project using SqlCe 4.0 with a code first entity framework model.

Model is very simple:

   public class MyThing
    {
        public int MyThingId { get; set; }

        public int UserId { get; set; }
        public string Title { get; set; }
        public string Address { get; set; }
        public string Description { get; set; }
        public DateTime Date { get; set; }
  }

When I try to create a new controller with the built in scaffolding too I get the following error:

"Unable to retrieve metadata for MyThing"

"Using the same DbCompiledModel to create contexts against different types of database servers is not supported. Instead, create a separate DbCompiledModel for each type of server being used.

How do I get scaffolding to work?

Answer

Jack Ukleja picture Jack Ukleja · Aug 28, 2012

By trial and error I found the line of code (it's the DbContext ctor) that is causing the error:

public class MyThingDb : DbContext
{
    // If I comment this constructor out the scaffolding works
    public MyThingDb()
        : base("DefaultConnection")
    {
    }

    public DbSet<MyThing> Things{ get; set; }
}

WTF?