How to use unsigned int / long types with Entity Framework?

entity-framework, entity-framework-6, mysql

Solution

Update Feb 2021

Apparently EF Core now supports `ulong` -- see @JimbobTheSailor's answer below.

Older Entity Framework versions:

Turns out that Entity Framework does not support `unsigned` data types. For `uint` columns, one could just store the value in a signed data type with a larger range (that is, a `long`). What about `ulong` columns? The common solution couldn't work for me because there is no EF-supported signed data type that can hold a `ulong` without overflowing.

After a bit of thinking, I figured out a simple solution to this problem: just store the data in the supported `long` type and cast it to `ulong` when accessed. You might be thinking: "But wait, ulong's max value > long's max value!" You can still store the bytes of a ulong in a long and then cast it back to ulong when you need it, since both have 8 bytes. This will allow you to save a ulong variable to a database through EF.

// Avoid modifying the following directly.
// Used as a database column only.
public long __MyVariable { get; set; }

// Access/modify this variable instead.
// Tell EF not to map this field to a Db table
[NotMapped]
public ulong MyVariable
{
    get
    {
        unchecked
        {
            return (ulong)__MyVariable;
        }
    }

    set
    {
        unchecked
        {
            __MyVariable = (long)value;
        }
    }
}

The casting is `unchecked` to prevent overflow exceptions.

Hope this helps someone.

Problem

Class properties with the `long` data type are properly mapped when adding a new migration (code-first), but `ulong` data types are skipped by mysql's EF provider. How does one map a property to use mysql's `unsigned bigint`?

Original source