asp.net mvc models vs entity framework models

Question

Would it be best practice to create a model in your asp.net mvc - model folder. Use these models with your views and by using a service layer to "adapt" my model to the EF-model.

Or have you used another approach. The problem with this approachs is that most of the times my (selfmade)model is a copy of the EF-model (not dry)

So can someone explain me what models to use with your view cause it is becomming very confusing. model / viewmodel / Entityframeworkmodel ....

Solution :

Thanks for answers all guess i am at the moment to refactor some things!

Answer 1

The correct approach is using different class for ViewModel and different for a persistance (entity). The usual reason is that you often need to send some additional data to a view (for example data to fill drop downs, data to disable some fields etc.), use different validation or show only subset of an entity.

I'm not purist. If I see that my view model is exactly the same as the entity I use the entity directly but I will refactor the code once I need any additional information in the view. Most often I start with entities and I end with view models because of incremental development.