How to Qualify Entities in EF 6

Question

My problem is with my website using WebPages, Entity Framework 6.1.3, c#, and a SQL CE database. One of my "database-first "generated entity types is named exactly the same as the system.TimeZone class, but intellisense and the IDE are not correctly picking up/handling the name collision.

My question is how do I fully qualify an entity name in code (Using EF 6.1.3, Entity context) to prevent name collision with system classes.

I have a EF implementation of an existing db table. The table was named "TimeZones". The Entity model was generated using database first approach.

EF pluralization rules translated the table name to an entity named "TimeZone".

Problem is, when I try to new up my "TimeZone" entity, intellisense thinks I am trying to new up the "System.TimeZone" class because all dot references to my new up TimeZOne instance are to properties and methods of the System.TimeZone class. I had expected to see the properties of my entity model's TimeZOne entity.

I would expect to be able to fully qualify my TimeZone entity with a namespace or include my model's namespace in a using statement at the top of my code. However, the "namespace" that EF 6.1.3 Model properties provides me doesn't seem to be a true namespace. The EF was generated from an existing database.

Answer 1

Make your entity class path explicit when you declare an object of it:

MyApplication.Entities.TimeZone tz = new MyApplication.Entities.TimeZone();

or simply:

var tz = new MyApplication.Entities.TimeZone();

Your entity class should be preceded by something like this:

namespace MyApplication.Entities
{
    public class Person
    {
        //
    }
}