Entity Framework: Get Mapped Table Name from an Entity

Extension methods for ObjectContext and DbContent to get the mapped table name from an entity.

Table of Contents

• The Problem
• The Solution
  • The Extension Methods
  • Using the Code
• References

The Problem

I am working on a set of extension methods to perform a bulk insert using Entity Framework, using internally the SqlBulkCopy object. One of the steps involved is to get the mapped table name from an entity. After some searching on Google, I found a post on StackOverflow that led me to the solution.

The Solution

The trick is to use the method ObjectQuery.ToTraceString to generate a SQL Select statement for an entity, and then extract the table name from that statement.

Let’s assume that you have an entity named Album corresponding to a table named dbo.Albums.

// context is ObjectContext
string sql = context.CreateObjectSet<T>().ToTraceString();

...

The generated SQL for that entity can be something like this:

SELECT 
[Extent1].[AlbumId] AS [AlbumId], 
[Extent1].[GenreId] AS [GenreId], 
[Extent1].[ArtistId] AS [ArtistId], 
[Extent1].[Title] AS [Title], 
[Extent1].[Price] AS [Price], 
[Extent1].[AlbumArtUrl] AS [AlbumArtUrl]
FROM [dbo].[Albums] AS [Extent1]

So, all we need to do is to parse the SELECT statement to get the table name. This is the approach used in the post above, but it has some limitations – that code will work only for tables that are in the default SQL Server schema (dbo.{tableName}). I made some changes to that code and I’m extracting the full table name using regular expressions.

The Extension Methods

I have created one extension method for DbContext and another for ObjectContext:

public static class ContextExtensions
{
    public static string GetTableName<T>(this DbContext context) where T : class
    {
        ObjectContext objectContext = ((IObjectContextAdapter) context).ObjectContext;

        return objectContext.GetTableName<T>();
    }

    public static string GetTableName<T>(this ObjectContext context) where T : class
    {
        string sql = context.CreateObjectSet<T>().ToTraceString();
        Regex regex = new Regex("FROM (?<table>.*) AS");
        Match match = regex.Match(sql);

        string table = match.Groups["table"].Value;
        return table;
    }
}

Using the Code

Getting the mapped table name for an entity named Album, using a ObjectContext object:

ObjectContext context = ....;
string table = context.GetTableName<Album>();

Or using a DbContext object:

DbContext context = ....;
string table = context.GetTableName<Album>();

References

• [StackOverflow] Get Database Table Name from Entity Framework MetaData
• [MSDN] ObjectQuery.ToTraceString Method