Juan on Software

This post will explain how to automatically deploy database for an application in Octopus with EntityFramework.

Build Data project

The data project contains all entities and a data context which inherits from DbContext and EF migrations. In real world application, it shouldn't be like this. All the entities should be placed in a different assembly. DbContext and Migrations should be in another assembly.

Suppose that the project has EF installed

Configuration entity

public class Configuration
{
	public Configuration()
	{
		Id = Guid.NewGuid();
	}

	public Guid Id { get; private set; }

	public string Version { get; set; }

	public string ReleaseNotes { get; set; }

	public DateTime SetupDate { get; set; }
}

XBankingDbContext context

public class XBankingDbContext : DbContext
{
	public XBankingDbContext()
		: base("name=XBankingDatabase")
	{
	}

	public IDbSet<Configuration> Configurations { get; set; }
}

Enable migration

Use this command Enable-Migrations to enable Migrations in PM console.

Use this command Add-Migration to add the first migration.

Override the method Seed of Migrations/Configuration class as below, which will add

protected override void Seed(XBankingDbContext context)
{
	var version = typeof(Configuration).Assembly.GetName().Version.ToString();

	if (!context.Configurations.Any(c => c.Version == version))
	{
		context.Configurations.Add(new Data.Configuration()
		{
			SetupDate = DateTime.Today,
			Version = version
		});
	}

	context.SaveChanges();
}

Packaging and push to Octopus

Use OctoPack to pack Data package, then use below command to publish the package to Octopus. Also add migrate.exe from EF package as a link into the project.

msbuild Demo.XBanking.sln 	/t:Build 
							/p:Configuration=Release
							/p:RunOctoPack=true
							/p:OctoPackPublishPackageToHttp=http://<your_server>:180/nuget/packages 
							/p:OctoPackPublishApiKey=API-XYZ

Config deployment step in Octopus

Create a Deploy a NuGet package step, choose a good package (suppose it is Demo.XBanking.Data), then enable Custom deployment scripts feature for the step.

To make migrate.exe work, pust some PowerShell commands into Post-deployment script as below

Write-Host "Connection String: <"$ConnectionString">"

$fullPath = (Join-Path $OctopusOriginalPackageDirectoryPath "migrate.exe")
Write-Host "Migrate Path:" $fullPath

Write-Host "Working Dir: "$(get-location)

# Run the migration utility
& "$fullPath" Demo.XBanking.Data.dll /startUpConfigurationFile=Demo.XBanking.Data.dll.config /connectionString=$ConnectionString /verbose | Write-Host

There are some variables should be configured in Octopus, (check references for more information)

• $ConnectionString : connection to the database. If not specifying, the tool get information from .config file.

Here is an result screenshot

References

1. Migrate.exe references