Overview

dotnet scaffold is an interactive command line tool to scaffold ASP.NET Core projects.

• Reference: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-dotnet-scaffold/

Installation

dotnet tool install --global Microsoft.dotnet-scaffold

Usage Example - General

dotnet scaffold follows a general pattern for all project types:

1. dotnet scaffold to start the interactive tool
2. Select a scaffolding category (project type) (like Razor Pages)
3. Select a scaffolder (like Razor Page - Empty)
4. Select the .NET project file (like MyWebApp.csproj)

The command scaffolds the project.

Usage Example - Entity Framework Scaffolders

To scaffold EF, you first need a model class. Then, invoke dotnet scaffold:

1. Select scaffolding category Razor Pages
2. Select scaffolder Razor Pages with Entity Framework (CRUD)
3. Select the .NET project file
4. Select the model class file
5. Enter the name of the database context (suffix it with DbContext)
6. Select the database provider (like sqlite-efcore)
7. Select the operations to scaffold (like CRUD or Create)

At this stage:

• the project file is updated with package references for Entity Framework
• Program.cs is updated to initialize the database connection
• appsettings.json is updated with connection information
• *DbContext.cs has been created and added to the project root
• Razor Pages for CRUD operations has been added to the Pages folder

8. Migrate the database: dotnet ef migrations add initialMigration
9. Update the database: dotnet ef database update