How to use EntityFramework connection string for Elmah?

Question

In ELMAH for logging errors to the database you can write:

<errorLog type="Elmah.SqlErrorLog, Elmah"
            connectionStringName="EducoparkEntities"/>

However, if I use EntityFramework, this doesn't work because the connection string for EF contains metadata as well:

<add name="EducoparkEntities" connectionString="metadata=res://*/EducoparkData.csdl|res://*/EducoparkData.ssdl|res://*/EducoparkData.msl;provider=System.Data.SqlClient;provider connection string=&quot;Data Source=(Local);Initial Catalog=...;User Id=...;Password=...;MultipleActiveResultSets=True&quot;" providerName="System.Data.EntityClient"/>

So, how can I use the EntityFramework connection string in Elmah?

Answer 1

You cannot - at least not directly. What you'd need to do is extract the part of the EF connection string that really references the database (the provider connection string), and put that into it's own entry in the <connectionStrings> section of your web.config:

<connectionStrings>
  <add name="EducoparkELMAH"
      connectionString="Data Source=(Local);Initial Catalog=...;User Id=...;Password=...;MultipleActiveResultSets=True" 
      provider="System.SqlClient" />
</connectionStrings>

Or you could do it programmatically - the entity context will have a property called "Connection", which in turn has a property "ConnectionString", which is the one you're looking for:

string elmahConnectionString = EducoparkEntities.Connection.ConnectionString;

Marc

Answer 2

1

You can extract the database connection string via the ConnectionStringBuilder provided in the entity framework.

private string ExtractConnectionStringFromEntityConnectionString(string entityConnectionString)
{
    // create a entity connection string from the input
    EntityConnectionStringBuilder entityBuilder = new EntityConnectionStringBuilder(entityConnectionString);

    // read the db connectionstring
    return entityBuilder.ProviderConnectionString;
}

2

To plug that db connection string into Elmah you will have to set it on Application_Start ( in Global.asax)