Enums with EF code-first – standard method to seeding DB and then using?

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Unfortunately, enums are not natively supported on EF 4.1. Here’s one rather known article on how to deal with them: Faking enums on EF 4. It does, however, require a wrapper.

There’s a simpler way to map enums in EF 4 however: just create an int property on your class to represent the int value of the enum. That’s the property that EF should map, then have a “mini wrapper” property to allow you to use the enum.

public class Appointment 
{   
    public int ID { get; set; }
    public string Description { get; set; }

    // This property will be mapped
    public int DayOfWeekValue { get; set; }

    public DayOfWeek Day
    {
        get { return (DayOfWeek) DayOfWeekValue; }
        set { DayOfWeekValue = (int) value; }
    }
}

public enum DayOfWeek
{
    Monday,
    Tuesday,
    Wednesday,
    Thursday,
    Friday,
    Saturday,
    Sunday
}

On generating the database, EF will happily ignore any type it doesn’t know how to map, but the int property will be mapped.

Note: This is taken directly from my answer to another enum and EF question: EF 4.1 Code First – map enum wrapper as complex type

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