Migrations is ignoring my maxlength when columntype was specified

[pedroivobraga]

I'm generating my database using migrations, when I specific the column type as varchar and maxlength the result is varchar(1)

        modelBuilder.Entity<Area>(entity =>
        {
            entity.Property(e => e.Name)
                .IsRequired()
                .HasMaxLength(50)
                .HasColumnType("varchar");
        });

I had to remove the column type to generate right.

[rowanmiller]

This is by-design, if you specify an explicit type then you are overriding all the other hints that EF would give the provider to work out a data type to use. You would typically put "varchar(50)" as the data type if that is what you want.

Leaving open for triage, as it seems a little strange that we are converting "varchar" to "varchar(1)"

[justdmitry]

As soon as MaxLength attribute (as source for HasMaxLength) is used not only for db schema, but also by GUI generators/validators - it's desirable for HasColumnType() also honor it.

[rowanmiller]

You are fine to put the max length attribute on, but if you use HasColumnType() then you are explicitly telling EF what type to use for the column. EF is not doing anything to convert this to varchar(1), it is just sending exactly what you supplied to the database (and SQL Server decides that varchar means varchar(1)).

BTW if you just want to swap to a non-Unicode data type then we have a work item to bring back IsUnicode so that you don't have to drop down to a hard-coded data type (#3420).