general question about EntityFramework

Question

hi all,

I am trying to re-write an old framework .NET 4.0 project to ASP.NET Core MVC .NET 7 and I have a few questions:

1. is it mandatory to use Entity Framework in a Core MVC project?
2. can I simply use database connections to retrieve and update data using existing stored procedures?
3. I just started reading about MVC and it seems that there are lots of differences between types of projects and versions of .NET: some projects provide a Data folder by default with an ApplicationDbContext.cs class, some are not providing the Data folder. Some older versions use to have a Startup.cs, currently everything moved to Program.cs.

I intend to use VS 2022 and .NET 7 for an ASP.NET Core Web App (Model-View-Controller) project. Is there a consistent documentation you can point at?

Thank you very much,

elsvieta

Answer 1

is it mandatory to use Entity Framework in a Core MVC project?

Use ADO.NET if you like. Keep in mind, EF Core is built on top of ADO.NET. EF Core can easily call a stored procedure.

SQL Queries

can I simply use database connections to retrieve and update data using existing stored procedures?

Yes. ASP.NET Core has dependency injection to pass a configuration service to a constructor. The configuration service is used to get to the connection string from appsettings.json.

ASP.NET Core fundamentals overview

Dependency injection in ASP.NET Core

Configuration in ASP.NET Core

I just started reading about MVC and it seems that there are lots of differences between types of projects and versions of .NET: some projects provide a Data folder by default with an ApplicationDbContext.cs class, some are not providing the Data folder. Some older versions use to have a Startup.cs, currently everything moved to Program.cs.

Correct ASP.NET Core is very different from ASP.NET framework. Set aside some time to read the ASP.NET Core fundamentals overview and go through a few tutorials to get a feel for ASP.NET Core.

Razor Pages with Entity Framework Core in ASP.NET Core - Tutorial 1 of 8

ASP.NET Core MVC with EF Core - tutorial series