LINQ to DB CLI tools

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NOTE: This is not a library you could reference from your project, but command line utility, installed using dotnet tool command (see installation notes).

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See this page for more detailed help.

• Installation
• Use
  • Usage Examples
    • Generate SQLite database model in current folder
    • Generate SQLite database model using response file

Installation

Requires .NET 8 or higher.

Install as global tool:

dotnet tool install -g linq2db.cli

Update:

dotnet tool update -g linq2db.cli

General information on .NET Tools could be found here

Use

To invoke tool use dotnet-linq2db <PARAMETERS> or dotnet linq2db <PARAMETERS> command.

Available commands:

• dotnet linq2db help: prints general help
• dotnet linq2db help scaffold: prints help for scaffold command
• dotnet linq2db scaffold <options>: performs database model scaffolding
• dotnet linq2db template [-o template_path]: creates base T4 template file for scaffolding customization code

For list of available options, use dotnet linq2db help scaffold command.

Usage Examples

Generate SQLite database model in current folder

This command uses minimal set of options, required for scaffolding (database provider and connection string) and generates database model classes in current folder.

dotnet linq2db scaffold -p SQLite -c "Data Source=c:\Databases\MyDatabase.sqlite"

Generate SQLite database model using response file

This command demonstrates use of configuration file with scaffold options combined with command line options.

dotnet linq2db scaffold -i database.json -c "Data Source=c:\Databases\MyDatabase.sqlite"

database.json file:

{ "general": { "provider": "SQLite", "connection": "Data Source=c:\\Databases\\TestDatabase.sqlite", "output": "c:\\MyProject\\DbModel", "overwrite": true } }

Here you can see that connection string passed using both command line and json config file. In such cases option passed in command line takes precedence.

Scaffold configs (response files) are convenient in many ways:

• you can store scaffolding options for your project in source control and share with other developers
• with many options it is hard to work with command line
• some options not available from CLI or hard to use due to CLI nature (e.g. various issues with escaping of parameters)