Poco+Entity Framework 4. Where should I add my methods for working with Poco classes?

Question

I've tried to use Entity Framework 4 and POCO for my MVC 3 project. May be, I don't understand the main idea of this ORM, but the problem is following:

1. I added ADO .NET Entity Data Model and make model according to database.
2. I clicked Add Code Generation Item and added ADO .NET POCO Entity Generator.
3. It makes classes for every database table.
4. I want to add some methods to work with data (Add, Update, Delete, GetAll etc) to appropriate models. For LINQTOSQL I added partial classes and placed them to Models. But now I can't do it because:

a) Models folder has classes with the same names, which was created by POCO.

b) If I place my partial class in the another folder, it will be another namespace - so, such classes won't be partial one.

c) If I place my code in POCO classes, it can be destroyed during update POCO.

How can I use it? Where sould I place my methods for data working? Is the best way to make for POCO and EF the other project - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/adonet/archive/2010/01/25/walkthrough-poco-template-for-the-entity-framework.aspx?

Answer 1

First of all you don't have to write your CRUD inside POCO, There are many places where you can do it like in edmx.cs file or write one more layer which is called as CRUD Services which handles the Database operations using context object.

Now coming to your questions,

1. Create separate Models folder and place the Model classes in there. Your Model class may like this,

   EmployeeDepartmentModel
   {
    prop EmpList List(Emp);
    prop DeptList List(Dept);
    //Emp and Dept are my POCOs
   }
   

2. So now I have to fill both of these list(Your CRUD question), For that, I will Create one method in Controller class(its better to write such logic in some another library, but for time being I suggest you to create in Controller),

   FillTheModel()
   {
     EmployeeDepartmentModel.EmpList = EDMX.GetAllEmployees;
     EmployeeDepartmentModel.DeptList = EDMX.GetAllDepartments;
   }
   

3. Now you can bind this model with your view.