C# POCO Classes with Postgres Database and Proper Casing (without using Entity Framework)

Question

I have created a database using Postgres SQL and I want to interact with this database using the Npgsql ADO.Net provider library. All of my Postgres tables and columns have lowercase naming, but, I want my C# POCOS to have uppercase naming.

For instance, in Postgres my user table is named "users" (plural) and it has a user_name column. In C#, I want to map that table and column to a class called User (singular) with a property called UserName.

All of the examples I see for using data annotations to accomplish this are using an ORM like EF, but I don't want to use an ORM, just raw Npgsql. Will data annotations work if I'm just using Npgsql (raw) without an ORM? For instance:

[Table("users")]
class User
{
  [Column("user_name")]
  [Required]
  public string UserName { get; set; }
}

Shay Rojansky Shay Rojansky · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-19T07:36:46

Npgsql doesn't do any sort of mapping for you - it's just responsible for sending your SQL commands to PostgreSQL and providing you with the results. It's up to you to write whatever SQL you want - Npgsql is totally unaware of your POCOs or any annotations you have on them.

If you don't want to hand-write SQL you need an O/RM such as Entity Framework or some other mapping layer. If you do decide to write your own SQL it's recommended you look at Dapper.

C# POCO Classes with Postgres Database and Proper Casing (without using Entity Framework)

2 Answers