Model First Approach with Entity Framework

Modal first approach means we can create Entities, relationships, and inheritance hierarchies on the entity.

In the first article i shown you that how to create Entity data modal.

Step(1):  In entity Data Modal for “Modal first approach”  Go to solution explorer and add new item and select Ado.Net entity data modal and give the name for this. After click in add you will see “ entity data Modal wizard” from there you select  Empty EF designer modal.

                                      

Step(2 ): Hare When you will click on finish yow will see a empty screen (.edmx) there you right click and select  “Entity” from Add New Point

Step(3):When you will click on Entity a new screen will popup there you give Entity name and click OK

Step(4): We  can also add properties in the generated entity by right clicking on entity - > Add New -> Scalar property.

Give the name for Scalar property

Same way we can add Entity and association through toolbox. Go to toolbox and select EntityFramework.

Step(5) After creating Entity ,association right click on designer surfer and select “Generate Database from Modal”.

Step(6): When you will click on generate database from modal” you will see a screen there you give the connection name and click on next

After  click on Next DDL database modal will show there you click on finish.

Step(7): After click on finish This will add ModelName.edmx.sql file in the project. You can execute DDL scripts in Visual Studio by opening .sql file -> right click -> Execute.

Now, we  can generate context class and entities by right clicking on the designer and select Add Code Generation Item..

This will add (ModelName).Context.tt and (ModelName).tt with context class and entity classes as shown below.

So in this way, you can design your db model.

POCO classes in Entity FrameWork

POCO :- POCO class is the class which doesn’t depend on any framework specific base class. It is like any other normal .net class that is why it is called “Plain Old CLR Objects” These POCO entities (also known as persistence-ignorant objects) support most of the same LINQ queries as Entity Object derived entities. These classes (POCO classes) implement only the domain business logic of the application.

Some developers use DTOs (Data Transfer Objects) with classes to pass the data b/w layers., Because POCOs are also used to pass data b/w layers ,but they become heavy. So they use DTOs those are also classes.

The main difference b/w DTO and POCO is that DTOs do not contain any methods. They only contain public members. So sending data through DTO is easy because this is lightweight Objects .

The below  code defines a POCO class.

If you want to create POCO classes instead of entity classes or default entity object, then you can create POCO entity classes.

To create POCOs classes first we have to disable auto create classes or auto create code generation, Which generate Context classes entity code in Model1.designer.cs. For disable this code generation right click on model1.edmx(ado.net data modal) and  click on property then you will see   the value of ‘Custom Tool’ As ‘EntityModelCodeGenerator ’ you remove this value.

After removing value of “Custom tool” you will se that in modal1.edmx there is no  Model1.designer.cs class means now we have to create properties (Context and Entities ) so for this we have to create POCOs classes.

Now double click on Modal1.edmx and right click on designer surface and click on Code generation Items. There a screen will open from there you select ‘ADO.NET POCO Entity Generator’ and click ‘Add’.

After click on add button you will see 2 classes one is modal1.context.tt and other is modal1.tt

Model1.Context.tt is a context file and Model1.tt is entities file. You can modify this file if you want to generate your template. Model1.Context.cs file has a context class and .cs files under Model1.tt are entity classes.

Entity classes have all properties as "Virtual". Means that these entities fulfil the requirements of POCO Proxy entities . These entities can be used as POCO entities or POCO Proxy entities. By default it will be behave  as POCO Proxy entities, but you can disable proxy creation by setting  a property "ObjectContext.ContextOptions.ProxyCreationEnabled = false".

Important :

• If you want to write a  unit test for context then replace ObjectSet<> to IObjectSet<>
• If you are not able to see ‘ADO.NET POCO Entity Generator’ then you install  NuGet package library.

What is entity Framework

Entity FrameWork  is a ORM framework. ORM stands for  "Object Relational Mapping " .

Use of ORM framework to creates the classes of database table and vice versa.

Why we Use  Entity FrameWork  The main and the only benefit of EF is it auto-generates code for the Model (middle layer), Data Access Layer, and mapping code, thus reducing a lot of development time.

Difference b/w ADO.NET and Entity Framework 

The main use of EF is that it is directly create object of database tables and the process of updating the database. Its also reduce the lot of  development work otherwise We have to write and maintain code.  Further, because the mapping between your objects and your database is specified declaratively instead of in code. In EF Actually queries are written in LINQ. Except EF when we write any query we have to write different query for different database but when we write any query in linq its support all database. So that EF is very useful.

Creating the model from database:

STEP -1 :Open the new project  and give the name of that project.

STEP 2 : Install entity framework

(A)        : Go to tools and click on Extensions and Updates.

In this screen click on online and search “nueget package manager” and install it.

(B)        After installing “nueget package manager”  you will see a new node as “nueget package manager” in tools

(C)        Click on Manage NuGet Package For solution and Search for “ entity framework” (nugget.orgs) and install it.

STEP 3 : Right click on solution explorer and add new item and select  “ADO.NET Entity DataModal” and give the name for this

                 

Step(4) : When you will click on add you will see this following screen. Select EF designer from database and click on Next and give the connection Once the database has been selected, the wizard will generate the Entity connection string. This is something like a regular database connection string. The only difference is that it contains more information on the Entity Framework model. and give the name of App.config file

Step(5): After click on next you will see your database tables from here you select you table name (you also can say class objects).

After  select  tables click on finish  now you will see  your these tables as  entity data maodal as a relation.

This is the way for creating a Entity database modal. 

More details about generating PDF using Spire.PDF

The intention behind writing this article is to introduce a new product for generating PDF which I felt is very simple and easy to use. Really generating a PDF makes it very simple using this component.

For this, you need not required to install Acrobat Reader and good thing is it can be integrated with .Net. So using C# or VB.NET we can create our PDF document.

Let me show some couple of example which will give you clear idea of how simple it is to use this component.

Steps to generate the simple PDF document –

1  1)      Add the reference of the Spire.Pdf dll in your project.

2)  Create an object of PDF document

PdfDocument doc = new PdfDocument();

3) Now you need a content place holder where actual content need to be loaded. So add a page in the PDF document.

PdfPageBase page = section.Pages.Add();

Creating PDF document with Text

Using Canvas.DrawString method, add the content. Here I have taken one textbox in my web page and loaded the content from that text box.

Code for add text object

private void LoadText(PdfSection section)

    {

        PdfPageBase page = section.Pages.Add();

        page.Canvas.DrawString(txtFreeText.Text,

                               new PdfFont(PdfFontFamily.Helvetica, 20f),

                               new PdfSolidBrush(Color.Red),

                               10, 10);

    }

Adding image in a PDF

For loading the image and adding it in a PDF document is very simple.

Create an object of PdfImage which takes parameter of Stream object. Here I have used FileUpload control in my web page and passed the InputStream as shown below:

PdfImage image = PdfImage.FromStream(FileUpload1.PostedFile.InputStream);

Code for adding Image

private void LoadImage(PdfSection section)

    {

        if (FileUpload1.HasFile)

        {

            PdfPageBase page = section.Pages.Add();

            PdfImage image = PdfImage.FromStream(FileUpload1.PostedFile.InputStream);

            float width = image.Width * 0.50f;

            float height = image.Height * 0.50f;

            float x = (page.Canvas.ClientSize.Width - width) / 2;

            page.Canvas.DrawImage(image, x, 60, width, height);

        }

    }

Adding grid in a PDF

This is the most important type of data representation which we usually require in our application.

i.e. - Show data in a grid format. This tool provides us easy way of creating grid structure.

Here we create an object of PdfTable and then using a DataSource property provides a collection object. I want to show First Name and Last Name in my grid.

PdfTable table = new PdfTable();

Code for generating grid

  PdfPageBase page = section.Pages.Add();

        //create table

        PdfTable table = new PdfTable();

        table.Style.CellPadding = 2;

        table.Style.DefaultStyle.BackgroundBrush = PdfBrushes.SkyBlue;

        table.Style.DefaultStyle.Font = new PdfTrueTypeFont(new Font("Arial", 10f));

       

        table.Style.AlternateStyle = new PdfCellStyle();

        table.Style.AlternateStyle.BackgroundBrush = PdfBrushes.LightYellow;

        table.Style.AlternateStyle.Font = new PdfTrueTypeFont(new Font("Arial", 10f));

       

        table.Style.HeaderSource = PdfHeaderSource.ColumnCaptions;

        table.Style.HeaderStyle.BackgroundBrush = PdfBrushes.CadetBlue;

        table.Style.HeaderStyle.Font = new PdfTrueTypeFont(new Font("Arial", 11f, FontStyle.Bold));

        table.Style.HeaderStyle.StringFormat = new PdfStringFormat(PdfTextAlignment.Center);

       

        table.Style.ShowHeader = true;

        table.DataSourceType = PdfTableDataSourceType.TableDirect;

//GenerateList return a data table       

table.DataSource = GenerateList();

       

        //Set the width of column

        float width = page.Canvas.ClientSize.Width - (table.Columns.Count + 1);

        table.Columns[0].Width = width * 0.24f * width;

        table.Columns[0].StringFormat = new PdfStringFormat(PdfTextAlignment.Left, PdfVerticalAlignment.Middle);

        table.Columns[1].Width = width * 0.21f * width;

        table.Columns[1].StringFormat = new PdfStringFormat(PdfTextAlignment.Left, PdfVerticalAlignment.Middle);

        table.Columns[2].Width = width * 0.24f * width;

        table.Columns[2].StringFormat = new PdfStringFormat(PdfTextAlignment.Left, PdfVerticalAlignment.Middle);

        table.Draw(page, new PointF(0, 10));

This is just a simple sample to show you how powerful is the tool. Not only loading text, images or grid, you can show lots of other data like

·         Adding Watermark

·         Drawing objects

·         Adding action to the links within the PDF

·         Adding Paging

·         Generating Barcodes

·         Merging more than one PDF into single PDF

·         Splitting one PDF into multiple

And many more…

One more feature about this component is providing Security to your PDF file means creating password protected PDF. Below is the code snippet to generate the password protected file.

doc.Security.KeySize = PdfEncryptionKeySize.Key128Bit;

        doc.Security.OwnerPassword = "pradeep";

        doc.Security.UserPassword = "123";

        doc.Security.Permissions = PdfPermissionsFlags.Print | PdfPermissionsFlags.FillFields;   

Note: One another important thing I would like to share with you is - This tool comes with the proper documentation along with sample demos which you can find in their website. It is a paid tool but the worth tool.

Conclusion

Using Spire.PDF, create you PDF files as per your requirement easily and efficiently. I shared some of its simple features, but there are lots more. So visit the website given below:

http://www.e-iceblue.com/Introduce/pdf-for-net-introduce.html#.U8pJYuOSzSl

Hope you like this article. Please share your comments whether it’s good or bad.