Entity Framework - Migrations - Code First - Seeding per Migration

Question

I am looking into Migrations in an effort to clean up our deployment processes. The less manual intervention required when pushing a change to production the better.

I have run into 3 major snags with the migrations system. They are show stoppers if I can not figure out a clean way around them.

1. How do I add Seed data per migration:

I execute the command "add-migration" which scaffolds a new migration file with Up and Down functions. Now, I want to automatically make changes to the data with both Up and Down changes. I don't want to add the Seed data to the Configuration.Seed method as this runs for all migrations which ends in all sorts of duplication problems.

2. If the above is not possible, how do I avoid duplications?

I have an enum that I loop through to add the values to the database.

foreach(var enumValue in Enum.GetValues(typeof(Access.Level)))
{
    context.Access.AddOrUpdate(
        new Access { AccessId = ((int)enumValue), Name = enumValue.ToString() }
    );
}
context.SaveChanges();

Even though I am using AddOrUpdate, I still get duplicates in the database. The above code brings me to my 3rd and final problem:

3. How can I seed Primary Keys?

My enumerable with the above code is:

public class Access
{
    public enum Level
    {
        None = 10,
        Read = 20,
        ReadWrite = 30
    }
    public int AccessId { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

I am specifying the values that I want as my primary key, but Entity Framework seems to ignore it. They still end up being 1,2,3. How do I get it to be 10,20,30?

Are these limitations of EF at the moment or are they intentional constraints to prevent some other kind of catastrophe I am not seeing?

Answer 1

1. When I have fixed data that I want to insert with a migration, I put the inserts directly in the Up() migration using calls to Sql("Insert ..."). See the note halfway down this page: how to insert fixed data
2. You prevent duplicates in the Seed method by calling the AddOrUpdate overload that takes an identifier expression specifying the natural key - see this answer and this blog entry.
3. Primary keys that are integers are created as identity fields by default. To specify otherwise use the [DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.None)] attribute

I think this is a good explanation of Initializer and Seed methods

Here is an example of how to use the AddOrUpdate method:

foreach(var enumValue in Enum.GetValues(typeof(Access.Level)))
{
    context.Access.AddOrUpdate(
        x => x.Name, //the natural key is "Name"
        new Access { AccessId = ((int)enumValue), Name = enumValue.ToString() }
    );
}