XML columns in a Code-First application

Question

I'm trying to create an XML column in Code First. I'm well aware Entity Framework doesn't fully support XML columns, and that it reads them as a string. That's fine. I would still like the column type to be XML, though. Here's my class:

class Content
{
    public int ContentId { get; set; }

    [Column(TypeName="xml")]
    public string XmlString { get; set; }

    [NotMapped]
    public XElement Xml { get { ... } set { ... } }
 }

Problem is, that Code First Migrations completely ignores the Column attribute and creates the field as an nvarchar(max) . I tried using [DataType("xml")], but that, too, didn't work.

Is this a migration bug?

Answer 1

Have you tried:

public String XmlContent { get; set; }

public XElement XmlValueWrapper
{
    get { return XElement.Parse(XmlContent); }
    set { XmlContent = value.ToString(); }
}

public partial class XmlEntityMap : EntityTypeConfiguration<XmlEntity>
{
    public XmlEntityMap()
    {
        // ...
        this.Property(c => c.XmlContent).HasColumnType("xml");

        this.Ignore(c => c.XmlValueWrapper);
    }
}