Entity Framework Core Command Cheat Sheet

This cheat sheet lists the most common EF Core commands using both the Package Manager Console (PMC) and the dotnet ef CLI.

Common EF Core Commands

Task	PMC Command	`dotnet ef` CLI Command
Add a migration	`Add-Migration MigrationName`	`dotnet ef migrations add MigrationName`
Remove last migration	`Remove-Migration`	`dotnet ef migrations remove`
Update database	`Update-Database`	`dotnet ef database update`
Update to specific migration	`Update-Database MigrationName`	`dotnet ef database update MigrationName`
Drop the database	`Drop-Database`	`dotnet ef database drop`
List migrations	`Get-Migrations`	`dotnet ef migrations list`
Apply pending migrations	(PMC uses `Update-Database`)	`dotnet ef database update`
Generate SQL script	`Script-Migration`	`dotnet ef migrations script`
Script to a specific migration	`Script-Migration From To`	`dotnet ef migrations script FromMigration ToMigration`
Reverse engineer (Scaffold)	`Scaffold-DbContext`	`dotnet ef dbcontext scaffold`
Get database info	N/A	`dotnet ef dbcontext info`
List DbSets in context	N/A	`dotnet ef dbcontext list`
Get context's connection string	N/A	`dotnet ef dbcontext info` (includes this info)

dotnet ef must be run from the project folder, or use --project and --startup-project to specify paths.

Reverse engineering example:

dotnet ef dbcontext scaffold "your_connection_string" Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer -o Models