How do you build OData IEdmModel from Entity Framework model

Question

The title says it all really. I've found several blogs with different ways (serializing the EF model to XML and then de-serializing again to the IEdmModel was one) but they're all based on old version of the OData package.

Answer 1

Serializing is the only way.

• Example.
• Relevant work.

I've ranted about this a few months ago. AFAIK nothing changed since then, and I personally don't expect them to change too much. The short story is that as of September 2012, there is no plan to use EdmLib in EF, nor is there to use EF's code in other projects.

How much should we align with OData’s EdmLib?

Not worth adopting code
    Cost of implementing SSDL & MSL
    Freedom to evolve our API independently 
Look at aligning names of types and properties where appropriate

Answer 2

If your DbContext is being built from a database-first approach the given answer will fail giving this error:

Creating a DbModelBuilder or writing the EDMX from a DbContext created using Database First or Model First is not supported. EDMX can only be obtained from a Code First DbContext created without using an existing DbCompiledModel.

After some time messing with this I have found an appropriate solution. Basically you grab the CSDL resource from the assembly containing the DbContext in question and parse it using the Microsoft.Data.Edm.Csdl.CsdlReader.TryParse method. The resulting IEdmModel is valid containing the exact information given by EntityFramework when the model was built.

See here for an example with usage