Color Properties in EF Core

• May 08, 2023

The following example demonstrates how to store a System.Drawing.Color property value in the EF Core-based database. Use the EF Core Value Converter to convert the System.Drawing.Color type to the System.Int32:

C#

using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.Schema;
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Storage.ValueConversion;
using System.Drawing;

public class BusinessObject : BaseObject {
    // ...    
    public virtual Color Color { get; set; }
}

class DataContext : DbContext {
    // ...
    public DbSet<BusinessObject> BusinessObjects { get; set; }

    protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder) {
        // ...
        modelBuilder.Entity<BusinessObject>()
            .Property(t => t.Color)
            .HasConversion<ColorToInt32Converter>();
    }
}

class ColorToInt32Converter : ValueConverter<Color, int> {
    public ColorToInt32Converter()
        : base(c => c.ToArgb(), v => Color.FromArgb(v)) { }
}

This technique uses the Microsoft ValueConverter Class to convert Color values to Int32 and vice versa.