Good Morning All,
I'm having a small conceptual problem with ADO.NET EF4 (and perhaps ORM in general) and I was hoping someone could help fill in the gaps in my knowledge.
In my example I have a normalised Database with two Tables: User & Company
User //
UserId(PK),
CompanyId(FK),
FirstName,
LastName
Company //
CompanyId(PK),
CompanyName
I have created an Entity Data Model to match these tables in my application.
I now need to display a list of Users along with their Company Name in a listbox control. I realise I can display a list of Users using:
DatabaseEntities db = new DatabaseEntities();
Listbox1.ItemSource = db.Users;
Obviously the problem here is that it will display the CompanyId field as oppose to the CompanyName.
My question is; What is the best approach to get at the CompanyName Field? Do I create a stored procedure to return a different record set? Create a new entity with the fields I require?
I can think of several approaches but I'm not sure which is best practice.
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Figured it out, i wasn't aware you could specify bindings like:
<TextBlock Grid.Column="3" Padding="10,20,0,0" Text="{Binding Company.CompanyName}"/>
Related
Is it possible to reference additional columns apart from the 'Code' and 'Name' columns when using a domain attribute in an entity?
E.g. A person entity has a code of '1' and a name of 'Smith' and a Gender of 'Male'
In a customer entity there is a domain value referencing the person entity which displays the following 1 {Smith}. The users would like an additional read only attribute which would copy the Gender value of 'Male' into the customer entity based on the domain value. Can this be done using out of the box MDS UI?
I know this is duplicate data and breaks normal form but for usability this would be useful. It would be the equivalent of referencing additional columns in an MS Access drop down list.
Many thanks in advance for any help
This is not possible with the standard UI. One option would be to develop a custom UI where you can handle these kind of requests.
If you want to stick with the standard product I can see a workaround but this is a bit of a "dirty" one.
You can misuse (abuse) the Name attribute of the Person entity by adding a business rule to the Person entity that generates the content of the Name attribute as a concatenation of multiple attributes. You of course need an additional attribute that serves as a place holder for the original Name. The concatenated field will then show in your customer entity.
One question that does come to mind is why a user would like/need to see the gender of a person in a customer list? As you have a separate Person entity I expect you to have multiple persons per customers. What would the gender of one person - even if it is the main contact - matter?
I am new to EF so please bear with me. I am using Entity Framework with an existing database in which the relationships are not defined.
Using EF, I am able to produce the model, but obviously the 'navigational properties' are not working. Is there a way I can specify the mapping between the entities?
For example, in my Product entity, I have a field CategoryID_fk (maps to Category entity). But since the relationships are not defined, I cannot load a Category while loading a Product entity.
Can someone guide me in this regard?
I do understand that it would be preferable to refactor our database but I am unable to do that now. Thanks in advance.
This link is very useful.http://www.entityframeworktutorial.net/
I think field names are not suitable conventions.Try to change field name as CategoryId or Category_CategoryId .I think it will work
Yes, you can do a group join. Basically you will retrieve Products and Category in separate queries and take an approach as indicated in this answer.
Something along these lines:
var productCategoryList = products.GroupJoin
(
categories,
p=> p.productId,
c=> c.CategoryId,
(p, c) => new ProductCategory
{
//Create your Product Category model here
}
).AsEnumerable();
I'm using .Net 4.5, entity framework 5, database first. I have a junction (many-to-many) table in my database. For this example lets say the table is "StudentsCourses":
Students
-PkStudentId
-Name
Courses
-PkCourseId
-CourseNumber
StudentsCourses
-FkStudentId
-FkCourseId
This works just fine right now. The 'generate model from database' creates a Student entity with a navigation property to the Course entity. But here is where the trouble is:
I need to add another column to the StudentsCourses table. Lets just call this column "CourseYear". So our junction table would now look like this:
StudentsCourses
-FkStudentId
-FkCourseId
-CourseYear
So, I've added this column to the database and ran "Update Model from Database" on the edmx. I would expect to see an entity created for StudentCourses, with a navigation property to both Students and Courses. But no such entity is created. I still see the same two tables (Students & Courses) with the same navigation property as before.
I've done a lot of reading and researching, but haven't really come across a clear-cut answer. There is a wealth of information on code-first which I can't apply to my scenario. Is there a way to get what I'm after? Is it as simple as adding a PkId to the StudentCourses table? SQL Replication is preventing me from doing this. I would think the composite should suffice, but maybe EF needs a PK to do it's magic? I read a little bit about manually setting relationships, but could not find anything speaking to my particular situation. It could be that I am just missing a simple step in the process of updating the edmx from database. I've done this plenty of times when: adding new tables, adding columns, deleting columns, etc. I'm following the same steps as I always do, but maybe I need to do something different in this case?
Thanks ahead of time for any help. It is greatly appreciated. Please let me know if any more information would help.
From what I've gathered it appears as though EF will not generate a model for a table that doesn't have a Primary Key.
I'm a bit late for this, but you have the answer in this thread Updating Entity Framework Model after adding a field to a previous look up only table
As they say here, you have to delete the relationship between Students and Courses in the designer. Then update your model from the database, and make sure StudentsCourses table is checked in the Tables branch of the Add tab.
I was wondering with Entity Framework 4.1 code first how do you guys handle queries that involve an existing aspnet_Users table?
Basically I have a requirement for a query that involves the aspnet_Users so that I can return the username:
SELECT t.Prop1, u.Username
FROM Table1 t
INNER JOIN aspnet_User u ON t.UserId = u.UserId
Where t.Prop2 = true
Ideally in linq I would like:
from t in context.Table1
join u in context.aspnet_Users on t.UserId equals u.UserId
where t.Prop2 = true
But I'm not sure how to get aspnet_Users mapping to a class User? how do I make aspnet_Users part of my dbset ?
Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance
Don't map aspnet_Users table or any other table related to aspnet. These tables have their own data access and their own logic for accessing. Mapping these tables will introduce code duplication, possible problems and breaks separation of concerns. If you need users for queries, create view with only needed information like id, user name, email and map the view. The point is that view will be read only, it will contain only allowed data and your application will not accidentally modify these data without using ASP.NET API.
First read Ladislav's answer. If you still want to go ahead : to do what you want would involve mapping the users and roles and members tables into the codefirst domain - which means writing a membership provider in code-first.
Luckily there is a project for that http://codefirstmembership.codeplex.com/ although its not a perfect implementation. The original is VB, look in the Discussion tab for my work on getting it running in c# MVC.
I'm working with the author on a better implementation that protects the membership data (password, last logged on date, all of the non-allowed data) but allow you to map and extend the user table. But its not ready yet!
You don't really need to use Entity Framework to access aspnet_membership provider accounts. You really just need to create an instance of the membership object, pass in a unique user identifier and a Boolean value indicating whether to update the LastActivityDate value for the user and the method returns a MembershipUser object populated with current values from the data source for the specified user.
You can then access the username by using the property of "Username".
Example:
private MembershipUser user =
Membership.GetUser(7578ec40-9e91-4458-b3d6-0a69dee82c6e, True);
Response.Write(user.UserName);
In case you have additional questions about MembershipProvider, you can read up on it on the MSDN website under the title of "Managing Users by Using Membership".
Hope this helps you some with your requirement.
I'm just starting out with the Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Services and I've run into an issue that I can't seem to figure out. I have two tables, one that has user information and the other that has a created by field. Within the database, there isn't a foreign key between these tables. The user table contains an arbitrary Id, a username, and a display name. The created by field contains the user's username. In my entity I would like to have the user's display name since this is what I need to display and expose over the ADO.NET Data Service? I'm aware that I could restructure the database, but I was hoping that I could do the join using the username as I would in a SQL statement.
Thanks in advance,
-Damien
You can make a view using a join of both tables, and then use this object to display the user's name.
There's some info on mapping custom queries here.