EF Core Tips - Adding Stored Procedures to EF Core Code First Migrations - Part 1

In this short article, we will explore techniques for adding stored procedures to your code-first migrations. In Part 1, we will provide a step-by-step guide to modifying your Up and Down methods, as well as adding a stored procedure to your migration script. The following steps will help you seamlessly integrate stored procedures into your code-first migrations.

1. Create an empty migration by running the add-migration command in the Package Manager Console or command line. (I recommend using an empty migration without any other changes to maintain cleaner code).

        In the Package manager console run the following command to create the migration.

add-migration SpGetProductsById

        In the CLI run the following command

dotnet ef migrations add SpGetProductsById

2. Once you have created an empty migration file, you need to modify the Up and Down methods to include your stored procedure.

3. However, it's important to note that if you plan to generate SQL scripts using this migration, you should use the Exec command before the query to ensure that the query is executed as SQL code. 

4. Additionally, it's recommended to use the prefix Unicode character string constants with the letter N to ensure that special characters are properly recognized by the database. Without the N prefix, the string may be converted to the default code page of the database, which may not recognize certain characters.

5. If you run a script migration using the following commands, you will be able to see the output generated by the migration

        In the Package manager console run the following command to create the migration.

PM> script-migration  -output script.sql -i

        In the CLI run the following command

dotnet ef migrations script --output script.sql -i