Entity Framework - Plural and Singular Table names

By default, the Entity Framework will assume that all of the names of your tables in your database are either pluralised, or in the case of code first, you would like them to be pluralised when created.

E.g. you have a table called "Product" and not "Products", or you want your table to be called "Product" and not "Products"

This is the problem that I had. My MVC application consisted of one web page that just dumped out the contents of the "Product" table onto the page. When I browsed to the page, I got an "Invalid object name 'dbo.Products'." yellow screen of death runtime error.

The Solutions

1. Rename the table to "Products". I didn't want to do this as I'm from the school of singular table names. I was also curious about situations where the tables couldn't be renamed.

2. Make use of Entity Framework's fantastic Conventions, that allow you to specify how you have or want your database to be setup.

To tell Entity Framework not to pluralise database table names, simply add the following code into your DbContext class:

public class EfDbContext : DbContext 
{ 
  public DbSet<Product> Products { get; set; } 
  protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder) 
  { 
    modelBuilder.Conventions.Remove<PluralizingTableNameConvention>(); 
  } 
}

This code will remove the Pluralising convention that is by default attached to all model builders. You will then be able to access database tables with Singular names.

Links

Table Naming Dilemma: Singular vs. Plural Names (StackOverflow)

PluralizingTableNameConvention Class (MSDN)