Entity Framework 6 GUID as primary key: Cannot insert the value NULL into column 'Id', table 'FileStore'; column does not allow nulls

Question

I have an entity with primary key "Id" which is Guid:

public class FileStore
{
    public Guid Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Path { get; set; }
}

And some configuration:

protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder)
{
    modelBuilder.Entity<FileStore>().Property(x => x.Id).HasDatabaseGeneratedOption(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity);
    base.OnModelCreating(modelBuilder);
}

When I try to insert a record I get a following error:

Cannot insert the value NULL into column 'Id', table 'FileStore'; column does not allow nulls. INSERT fails.\r\nThe statement has been terminated.

I don't want to generate Guid manually. I just want to insert a record and get Id generated by SQL Server. If I set .HasDatabaseGeneratedOption(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity), Id column is not Identity column in SQL Server.

How can I configure Entity Framework to autogenerate Guid in SQL Server?

Answer 1

In addition to adding these attributes to your Id column:

[Key]
[DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
public Guid Id { get; set; }

in your migration you should change your CreateTable to add the defaultValueSQL property to your column i.e.:

Id = c.Guid(nullable: false, identity: true, defaultValueSql: "newsequentialid()"),

This will prevent you from having to manually touch your database which, as you pointed out in the comments, is something you want to avoid with Code First.