Generic or Specific Repositories in Entity Framework: Which Approach is Best?

Entity Framework repository mode: generic or specific?

When using Entity Framework to implement the repository pattern for a SQL database, you need to decide whether to create a generic repository for all entities or create specific repositories for each entity.

Generic repository (anti-pattern)

Although generic repositories seem flexible, they are generally not recommended because they:

• Ignoring domain specificity, each entity may have unique operations and queries.
• Deprive ORM of its built-in generic query functionality.
• Limited operations such as composite key support and specific field updates.
• Leak DAL logic into the service via predicate conditions.

Specific warehousing

Instead, it is recommended to create customized specific repositories for each entity. This method:

• Conform to the domain model and its unique requirements.
• Allows optimization and specific queries per entity.
• Encapsulate data access details in the repository layer, thereby promoting abstraction.

The role of ORM

For Entity Framework, DbContext acts as the unit of work and DbSet acts as the generic repository. Therefore, using a custom generic repository is redundant.

Recommended method

To best manage data access using Entity Framework:

• Avoid using generic repositories.
• Use the generic query mechanism provided by DbContext to define entity-specific queries in a specific repository.
• Implements a concrete repository inherited from an optional generic repository (if needed) for code organization.
• Expose a specific repository to the calling code.
• Ensure repositories return domain models rather than entities to maintain data access abstraction.
• Consider creating entity-specific domain models to further enhance abstraction.

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