I'm experimenting with using Robot Framework for testing .NET applications. It uses Python so I've been using PythonNet to call methods in the .NET assemblies. Now I've struck a problem: Calling an assembly that calls down into an Entity Framework-based data access assembly.
I'm not calling the data access assembly directly, but the assembly that uses it. However, I'm getting an error:
System.InvalidOperationException: No Entity Framework provider found for the ADO.NET provider with invariant name 'System.Data.SqlClient'. Make sure the provider is registered in the 'entityFramework' section of the application config file.
I've created a similar test project in C# which does not include an EntityFramework section in the config file and it works, so I know I don't need a config file to use Entity Framework.
Another Stackoverflow question, here, suggested that it was necessary to reference the EntityFramework.SqlServer.dll. I tried adding the following to my Python code:
clr.AddReference("EntityFramework.SqlServer")
(note that the path to the .NET bin folder has been added to the Python sys.path already)
This didn't make any difference, I still got the same error.
Does anyone know how to add a reference to EntityFramework.SqlServer.dll in Python or, alternatively, whether it's definitely not possible to call a C# assembly that uses Entity Framework from Python?
EDIT:
Here's the full code that I have so far:
import clr
import sys
sys.path.append(r"C:\Users\...\bin\Debug")
clr.AddReference("SchoolGrades")
clr.AddReference("DataAccess")
clr.AddReference("Models")
clr.AddReference("EntityFramework")
clr.AddReference("EntityFramework.SqlServer")
from SchoolGrades import SchoolRoll
from DataAccess import SchoolContext
from Models import Student
connectionString = r"Data Source=(LocalDb)\mssqllocaldb;Initial Catalog=DataAccess.SchoolContext;Integrated Security=True"
context = SchoolContext(connectionString)
school = SchoolRoll(context)
student = Student()
student.StudentName = "Python Student"
school.AddStudent(student)
It fails with the error above after the last line.
EDIT 2:
Sorry, looks like I've wasted your time. I tried pasting the code above into a .py file and running it, and it worked perfectly. I had previously just been working it out interactively and had been getting the error above.
At least if anyone else wants to know if it's possible to run a .NET assembly that uses Entity Framework from Python, the answer is yes.
EDIT 3: Turns out the references to EntityFramework and EntityFramework.SqlServer are not needed; the script works without them.
