Connecting to SQL over TCP/IP with Entity Framework

So this has caused me quite a headache, but I've finally managed to get it working. Code First Entity connecting to remote SQL server.

First the model classes:

public class Blog
{
    public int BlogId { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }

    public virtual List<post> Posts { get; set; }
}

public class User
{
    public int UserId { get; set; }
    public string DisplayName { get; set; }
}

public class Post
{
    public int PostId { get; set; }
    public string Title { get; set; }
    public string Content { get; set; }

    public int BlogId { get; set; }
    public virtual Blog Blog { get; set; }

    public int UserId { get; set; }
    public virtual User User { get; set; }
}

And the context that holds them together, notice how it has a connection string name in the constructor:

public class BlogContext : DbContext
{
    public BlogContext() : base("name=BlogContextConnection") { }

    public DbSet<blog> Blogs { get; set; }
    public DbSet<post> Posts { get; set; }
    public DbSet<user> Users { get; set; }
}

Which relates to this connection string, which was quite a pain to get working. Note that this is using SqlClient not EntityClient:

<connectionStrings>
  <add name="BlogContextConnection"
        providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"
        connectionString="Server=SERVER;Database=Blog;Integrated Security=False;User Id=USER;Password=PASSWORD;" />
</connectionStrings>

Of course, you can connect with windows auth if you wish, but I'm doing this over networks LAN and internet so I'm not using integrated security. Just yet.

Comments

[JWP]

Yes, so true, what seems so simple with connection strings turns out to be a deep dive sometimes. We had a EF project just the other day where Visual Studio Explorer could see our database ServerName\EntityName but as soon as we put the very same connecting string into EF we simply could not connect. We never did figure that one out but had plenty of "Fun" trying.