MVC - Context always uses the default connection string

Question

I am looking to pick up MVC after previously working with web forms and I have been doing the movie tutorial over at asp.net but I am having an issue that is utterly confusing.

I have 2 connection string in my web config:

<connectionStrings>
        <add name="MovieDBContext"
       connectionString="Data Source=(LocalDB)\(LocalDB)\MSSQLLocalDB;AttachDbFilename=|DataDirectory|\Movies.mdf;Integrated Security=True"
       providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
       <add name="DefaultConnection" connectionString="Data Source="(LocalDB)\MSSQLLocalDB;AttachDbFilename=|DataDirectory|\aspnet-MvcMovie-20160408044847.mdf;Initial Catalog=aspnet-MvcMovie-20160408044847;Integrated Security=True"
          providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
</connectionStrings>

I then have my context (Note I have tried setting the connection string here too after another answer on stack although I believe it should do it automatically if the context name is the same as the connection string name

 public class MovieDBContext : DbContext
    {
        public MovieDBContext() : base("MovieDBContext"){ }

        public DbSet<Movie> Movies { get; set; }
    }

Whatever I do it uses the default connection string rather than the MovieDbContext connection string and for the life of me I cant work out why. If I set the data source of the default connection string to the datasource of the moviedbcontext one it works as it should and connects to the right database but I cant work out why it will ONLY use the default one (I have even tried changing the names of the connection string and the context to no avail)

Any help appreciated

Cheers

Answer 1

Try commenting the call to the base constructor in your derived DbContext class and just let the default constructor be called. Be sure that your web.config entry for the connection is in the root web.config file of the application and that it conforms to the expected naming conventions (see further down for more info).

public class MovieDBContext : DbContext
{
  //// comment the call to the base constructor
  // public MovieDBContext() : base("MovieDBContext"){ }

  public DbSet<Movie> Movies { get; set; }
}

The MSDN documentation at https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg679577%28v=vs.103%29.aspx provides information about the convention used to determine the database name.

protected DbContext()

Constructs a new context instance using conventions to create the name of the database to which a connection will be made. By convention the name is the full name (namespace + class name) of the derived context class. For more information on how this is used to create a connection, see the remarks section for DbContext.