I have the following sample code which gets a list of values from a table in the DB and binds them to a checkbox list.
var db = new DBContext();
db.Entity1.ToList().ForEach(
x => CheckBoxList1.Items.Add(new ListItem(x.Value, x.ID));
I have about 10 checkboxlists like these and I dont want to repeat the code. I'm trying to extract a method out of it and use it for all checkboxes. Is it possible to load an entity by a string name? Something like -
db.Load("Entity1").ToList().ForEach...
So I can pass in the entity name and the checkbox list and do the foreach loop in the method and bind the items, like this -
void BindValues(string entityName, CheckBoxList checkBoxList)
{
db.Load("Entity1").ToList().ForEach(
x => checkBoxList.Items.Add(new ListItem(x.Value, x.ID)));
}
Thank you.
In Code First the DbContext exposes a .Set() or .Set(Type) method to get a handle on the table. So assuming straight EF exposes the same, and you are happy to access your lists by their entity type rather than a string, this would work for you.
Related
I am new to entity framework and I am trying to get my head around it. I am used to writing stored procedures which have all the data I need on a example by example basis.
I am under the impression that I can get all values from a particular table including the foreign key values direct using entity framework without having to write a select query which joins the data.
I have the following in my controller
public ActionResult Patient()
{
using (var context = new WaysToWellnessDB())
{
var patients = context.Patients.ToList();
return View(patients);
}
}
In my view I have the following
#foreach (var item in Model)
{
<p>
#item.FirstName #item.Surname #item.Gender.GenderDesc
</p>
}
I have two tables, Patient and Gender, GenderId is a foreign key which I am trying to get the GenderDesc from that table.
I am getting the following message
The ObjectContext instance has been disposed and can no longer be used for operations that require a connection.
Can someone explain why I cannot access GenderDesc. It does work if I remove the using() around my context, but I don't really want to leave that open, is there a way to get this to work still having the using around?
Thanks in advance.
Correct, you have disposed of the context as it is within a using statement, so anything you try to access from then on will not be able to be lazy loaded. The disadvantage with lazy loading is that it will perform a query for the gender for every patient you are iterating over, which is handy, but bad! I would load the related table at query time using Include.
You'll need a new import:
using System.Data.Entity;
And then include the related table:
var patients = context.Patients.Include(p => p.Gender).ToList();
That will result in a query which will join to your "Gender" table and you should be able to output item.Gender.GenderDesc in your view.
Getting an error client side with breeze: "Cannot call method 'map' of undefined" when trying to pull over some data. The difference between this action and one that works is that this action is calling a stored procedure and returning ObjectResult<T> instead of DbSet<T>.
Might this be why I get an error? Using Chrome Developer tools, I do see that the breeze controller is returning json data.
I have created a complex model type in the edmx for mapping the rows returned from the stored procedure.
The action in the breeze controller has a return type of IEnumerable<T>.
I experienced the same error when using an EF complex type. A workaround was to create a view in my database instead of using a complex type, set the stored procedure to return a type of the new view which had a primary key and then it worked. It would seem that breeze requires entities to have a primary key defined.
Hm... not quite sure what is happening, so just guessing here, but try adding an AsQueryable() to the result returned, and changing the result type to a IQueryable.
We don't have any stored proc tests for breeze yet, but this is impetus for me to add some :)
I had the very same issue, but thank God I figured out a solution. Instead of using a stored procedure, you should use a view, as Breeze recognizes views as DbSet<T>, just like tables. Say you have a SQL server table that contains two tables Customers and Orders.
Customers (**CustomerId**, FirstName, LastName)
Orders (OrderId, #CustomerId, OrderDate, OrderTotal)
Now, say you want a query that returns orders by CustomerId. Usually, you would do that in a stored procedure, but as I said, you need to use a view instead. So the query will look like this in the view.
Select o.OrderId, c.CustomerId, o.OrderDate, o.OrderTotal
from dbo.Orders o inner join dbo.Customers c on c.CustomerId = o.CustomerId
Notice there is no filtering (where ...). So:
i. Create a [general] view that includes the filtering key(s) and name it, say, OrdersByCustomers
ii. Add the OrdersByCustomers view to the entity model in your VS project
iii. Add the entity to the Breeze controller, as such:
public IQueryable<OrdersByCustomers> OrdersByCustomerId(int id)
{
return _contextProvider.Context.OrdersByCustomers
.Where(r => r.CustomerId == id);
}
Notice the .Where(r => r.CustomerId == id) filter. We could do it in the data service file, but because we want the user to see only his personal data, we need to filter from the server so it only returns his data.
iv. Now, that the entity is set in the controller, you may invoke it in the data service file, as such:
var getOrdersByCustomerId = function(orderObservable, id)
{
var query = breeze.EntityQuery.from('OrdersByCustomerId')
.WithParameters({ CustomerId: id });
return manager.executeQuery(query)
.then(function(data) {
if (orderObservable) orderObservable(data.results);
}
.fail(function(e) {
logError('Retrieve Data Failed');
}
}
v. You probably know what to do next from here.
Hope it helps.
I am new to MVC, so please excuse me if my question sounds silly or too simple. I am using Entity Data Model for database access. So in my Models folder, I have added an EDMX file and I can access the model classes from my controllers and strongly typed views. The problem arises when I access more than one table in my controller e.g.
If I have following tables in my DB :
Departments(DepartmentID, DepartmentName, DepartmentPhone)
Insurances(InsuranceID, InsuranceName, InsuranceAddress)
Employees(EmployeeID, EmpFName, EmpLName, DepartmentID, InsuranceID)
And I want to display a list of Employees with their department and insurance information.
In my Controller's Action Method I access the DB using EDM and get the information in an anonymous type:
using (var context = new MyEntities())
{
var model = (from d in context.Departments
join e in context.Employees on d.DepartmentID equals e.DepartmentID
join I in context.Insurances on I.InsuranceID equals e.InsuranceID
select new
{
DepartmentID = d.DepartmentID,
EmployeeID= e.EmployeeID,
EmpFName= e.EmpFName,
EmpLName= e.EmpLName,
DepartmentName= d.DepartmentName,
InsuranceName= I.InsuranceName
}).ToList();
return View(model);
}
I don't have a class of this anonymous type in my Model folder so I can't create a strongly typed view. So what is the best way to pass this list to the View?. Using viewbag will be an overkill if the collection is too large. Creating a new Model for this anonymous class doesn't sound right as it needs to be updated all the time if I change my selection in Controllers Action Method.
All suggestions are welcomed. I tried looking through other questions on SO but couldn't find anything relevant.
Thanks.
I don't have a class of this anonymous type in my Model folder so I
can't create a strongly typed view
Right click on your project, Add New Class ... and now you have a type in your Model folder. This is the way to go in ASP.NET MVC => view models.
And then obviously you pass this type to your view:
select new MyViewModel
{
DepartmentID = d.DepartmentID,
EmployeeID = e.EmployeeID,
EmpFName = e.EmpFName,
EmpLName = e.EmpLName,
DepartmentName = d.DepartmentName,
InsuranceName = I.InsuranceName
}).ToList();
And of course now your view becomes strongly typed to this view model:
#model IEnumerable<MyViewModel>
...
I'm afraid that predefined strongly-typed ViewModels are the way to go. It is a pain to have to update seemingly duplicate code in multiple places but in my experience it's only a problem for smaller projects. As the project grows you begin to see differences between database model objects (entities) and the viewmodels passed to your views, such as Validation and processing attributes and view-specific data, and when you get to that point you begin to prefer having separate Entity and ViewModel definitions.
However, back on-topic: an alternative solution to your problem is to use reflection to convert an anonymous type into a Dictionary<String,Object> object. Note that ASP.NET MVC does this for converting new { foo = "bar" }-syntax expressions into dictionaries for Route Values and HTML attributes already. Performance is acceptable, but don't try to do it for 10,000 objects for a single HTTP request otherwise you might get bogged down.
Here's what the code for that would look like:
Object anonymousType = new { whatever = "foo" };
Dictionary<String,Object> dict = new Dictionary<String,Object>();
foreach (PropertyDescriptor descriptor in TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(anonymousType )) {
Object value = descriptor.GetValue(anonymousType );
dict.Add( descriptor.Name, value );
}
Of course this means that your Views won't benefit from compile-time type-checking and you'll have to maintain a documented list of dictionary keys (assuming you aren't iterating over keys in your view).
I'll note that I am surprised Microsoft didn't make anonymous types automatically implement IDictionary because it seems natural.
dynamic type is your friend.
You can declare your view as loosely typed, having a dynamic as your model
#model dynamic
You will access model properties as you do in strongly typed view
<h1>Model.DepartmentId</h1> - <h2>Model.DepartmentName</h2>
<span>Model.EmployeeId</span>
The problem thought, that dynamics contains internal properties, if you are using MVC2 you need a little trick to make it work. But seems for MVC3 and higher, it's not longer required.
New to Entity Framework .Using EF4. I have found articles and managed to use stored procedures to return a list of entities.
But cannot see/work out how you return a single entity.
Given that I have a stored procedure "GetCustomerById" that return a single customer How do I map it?
Using the Model Browser I right click on "Function Import" and I have added my StoredProcedure
however whatever I select does not seem to return a "Single Entity"
Am I missing the obvious?
thanks a lot for any link or suggestions
When you do Function Import you need to select the entity your SP returns from the drop down (i.e. Customer). The catch is EF does NOT directly returns Customer object as per your selection but System.Data.Objects.ObjectResult which implements IEnumerable.
To be more specific, here is the generated code for your function:
public ObjectResult<Customer> GetCustomerById(Nullable<global::System.Int32> Id)
That's because EF has no idea if your SP returns a single record or a list of them so it wraps the result inside ObjectResult. You can enumerate through this to get your Customer entity like any other IEnumerable object. For example:
Customer myCustomer = context.GetCustomerById(1).First();
I have settled on trying to use ASP.NET MVC but the first part I want to replace is the Model. I am using LLBL Pro for the model.
I have a table called "Groups" that is a simple look up table. I want to take thhe results of the table and populate a list in MVC. Something that should be very simple... or so I thought.... I've tried all kinds of things as I was getting errors like:
The model item passed into the dictionary is of type 'System.Collections.Generic.List1[glossary.EntityClasses.GroupEntity]', but this dictionary requires a model item of type 'System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable1[glossary.CollectionClasses.GroupCollection]'.
private GroupCollection gc = new GroupCollection();
public ActionResult Index()
{
gc.GetMulti(null);
return View( gc.?????? );
}
This is all I am trying to do, I've tried lots of variations, but my goal is simply to take the data and display it.
Not sure if this would work, but you could try wrapping the EntityCollection into a ViewModel class and passing it to the View like so:
public class GroupsViewModel()
{
public GroupCollection Groups { get; set; }
// other items in your view model could go here
}
then convert your controller method to
public ActionResult Index()
{
GroupCollection gc = new GroupCollection();
gc.GetMulti(null);
GroupsViewModel vm = new GroupsViewModel();
vm.Groups = gc;
return View(vm);
}
I like this approach because each ViewModel is an object in-and-of itself.
You can use the AsEnumerable extension where your ????? are or change the type of your ViewUserControl(in the markup) to be of type System.Collections.Generic.List. Basically what you need to correct is the mismatch between the type of the View and the Model being passed in.
I'm not sure about your exact error, but I'd venture a guess that one of two things are happenging:
You are making some sort of invalid / illegal call on your LLBLGen object. If this is the case make sure you are setting it up right / calling right method / property etc.
The model you are passing to the veiw is too hairy for it to deal with. In this case, and in general, you should create a light 'View Model' class with just the data you want displayed and populate it from your LLBLGen object first then pass it to the view, which will be able to easily handle your view model class.
Here are some references:
http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2009/04/13/asp.net-mvc-tip-50-ndash-create-view-models.aspx
http://nerddinnerbook.s3.amazonaws.com/Part6.htm
http://www.codinginstinct.com/2008/10/view-model-inheritance.html
Stemming off what Yuriy said, it looks like your view is strongly typed to a "collection" of a collection of your groupentity, and you are trying to pass just the collection of your groupentities. Make sure your "collection" type (IEnumerable, IList, etc) matches what type of collection you are sending in your controller, along with the type of the actual object in the collection.
View:
System.Collections.Generic.List1[glossary.EntityClasses.GroupEntity]
Controller:
System.Collections.Generic.List1[glossary.EntityClasses.GroupEntity]
Just a thought