Searching many-to-many relations with Vici CoolStorage - coolstorage

For an application used for managing booktitles and such, I'm using CoolStorage as an ORM.
The database has a table named 'titles'. Each title can have n authors, stored in the 'authors' table. The two tables are connected through the linktable 'titles_authors', which is pure.
When I try to filter titles on authors, I get an exception:
Unable to cast object of type 'QueryExpression' to type 'System.String'
Does anyone know how to filter the titles by author?

Set this up in your Title Class:
[ManyToMany("titles_authors", Pure = true, ForeignLinkKey = "AuthorId", LocalLinkKey = "TitleId")]
public abstract CSList<Author> Authors{ get; set; }
And vice versa in the Authors class...
Then you can access by:
CSList titlesByAuthor = Title.List("Authour.Name = "Bob Thorn");

Related

hotchocolate throws error when using UseFiltering() on a field

I have a pretty simple setyp where I'm putting graphql over an entityframework datacontext (sql server).
I'm trying to get filtering to work. I've tried adding .UseFiltering() to a field descriptor like so...
descriptor.Field(t => t.AccountName).Type<NonNullType<StringType>>().UseFiltering();
But it causes this error on startup...
HotChocolate.SchemaException: 'Unable to infer or resolve a schema
type from the type reference Input: System.Char.'
I assume I'm doing something wrong somewhere...
"UseFiltering" is supposed to be used to filter data which represents a collection of items in some way (IQueryable, IEnumerable, etc).
For instance, if you have users collection and each user has AccountName property you could filter that collection by AccountName:
[ExtendObjectType(Name = "Query")]
public class UserQuery
{
[UseFiltering]
public async Task<IEnumerable<User>> GetUsers([Service]usersRepo)
{
IQueryable<User> users = usersRepo.GetUsersQueryable();
}
}
In that example the HotChocolate implementation of filtering will generate a number of filters by user fields which you can use in the following way:
users(where: {AND: [{accountName_starts_with: "Tech"}, {accountName_not_ends_with: "Test"}]})
According to your example: the system thinks that AccountName is a collection, so tries to build filtering across the chars the AccountName consists of.

How can I delete all records from a table?

I've been searching for an answer on how to delete ALL records from a table using LINQ method syntax but all answers do it based on an attribute.
I want to delete every single record from the databse.
The table looks like so:
public class Inventory
{
public int InventoryId { get; set; }
public string InventoryName { get; set; }
}
I'm not looking to delete records based on a specific name or id.
I want to delete ALL recods.
LINQ method syntax isn't a must, bt I do prefer it since it's easier to read.
To delete all data from DB table I recommend to use SQL:
Trancate Table <tableName>
Linq is not meant to change the source. There are no LINQ methods to delete or update any element from your input.
The only method to change you input, is to select the (identifiers of the )data that you want to delete in some collection, and then delete the items one by one in a foreach. It might be that your interface with the source collection already has a DeleteRange, in that case you don't have to do the foreach.
Alas you didn't mention what your table was: Is it a System.Data.DataTable? Or maybe an Entity Framework DbSet<...>? Any other commonly used class that represents a Table?
If you table class is a System.Data.DataTable, or implements ICollection, it should have a method Clear.
If your tabls is an entity framework DbSet<...>, then it depends on your Provider (the database management system that you use) whether you can use `Clear'. Usually you need to do the following:
using (var dbContext = new MyDbContext(...))
{
List<...> itemsToDelete = dbContext.MyTable.Where(...).ToList();
dbContext.MyTable.RemoveRange(itemsToDelete);
dbContext.SaveChanges();
}

Entity Splitting For One-To-Many table relationships

Following this article (What are best practices for multi-language database design?), I have all my database tables splitted in two: the first table contains only language-neutral data (primary key, etc.) and the second table contains one record per language, containing the localized data plus the ISO code of the language. The relationship between the two tables is one to many.
Here a screenshot of the datamodel: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17099565/datamodel.jpg
Because the website has 8 languages, for each record in table "CourseCategory" I have 8 record in table "CourseCategoryContents". The same happens with "Course" and "CourseContent"
Then I use Entity Splitting in order to have only one entity for the Course Category and one entity for the Course:
public class CourseCategoryConfiguration : EntityTypeConfiguration<WebCourseCategory>
{
public CourseCategoryConfiguration()
{
Map(m =>
{
m.Properties(i => new { i.Id, i.Order, i.Online });
m.ToTable("CourseCategories");
});
Map(m =>
{
m.Properties(i => new { i.LanguageCode, i.Name, i.Permalink, i.Text, i.MetaTitle, i.MetaDescription, i.MetaKeywords });
m.ToTable("CourseCategoryContents");
});
}
}
public class CourseConfiguration : EntityTypeConfiguration<WebCourse>
{
public CourseConfiguration()
{
Map(m =>
{
m.Properties(i => new { i.Id, i.CategoryId, i.Order, i.Label, i.ThumbnailUrl, i.HeaderImageUrl });
m.ToTable("Courses");
});
Map(m =>
{
m.Properties(i => new { i.LanguageCode, i.Name, i.Permalink, i.Text, i.MetaTitle, i.MetaDescription, i.MetaKeywords, i.Online });
m.ToTable("CourseContents");
});
}
}
Then to retrive the courses in a desired language including their category I do this:
using (WebContext dbContext = new WebContext())
{
// all courses of all categories in the desired language
return dbContext.Courses
.Include(course => course.Category)
.Where(course => course.LanguageCode == lan
&& course.Category.LanguageCode == lan)
.ToList();
}
}
Entity splitting works fine with one-to-one relationships, but here I have one-to-many relationships.
The website has contents (CourseCategories and Courses) in 3 languages ("en", "de", "fr").
EF correctly returns all the Courses with their Category in the right language (eg. in english), but returns each record 3 times. This is because I have the CourseCategory in 3 languages too.
The only one working solution I came up is avoiding using ".Include(Category)", getting all the courses in the desired language in first, then, in a foreach cycle, for each Course retriving its Category in language. I don't like this lazy loading approach, I would like to retrive all the desired data in one shot.
Thanks!
The best solution is to map tables to the model as it then in your model Course class will have a navigation property ICollection<CourseCategoryContent>.
In this case you just project this model to DTO or ViewModel "according to your application design"
e.g.
Your model will look like this
public class Course
{
public int Id {get; set;}
public int Order {get; set;}
public ICollection<CourseCategoryContent> CourseCategoryContents {get; set;}
}
public class CourseCategoryContent
{
public string LanguageId {get; set;}
public string Name {get; set;}
}
Then just create new DTO or ViewModel like :
public class CourseDTO
{
public int Id {get; set;}
public int Order {get; set;}
public string Name {get; set;}
}
Finally do the projection
public IQueryable<CourseDTO> GetCourseDTOQuery ()
{
return dbContext.Courses.Select(x=>new CourseDTO{
Id = x.Id,
Order = x.Order,
Name = x.CourseCategoryContents.FirstOrDefault(lang => lang.LanguageId == lang).Name,
});
}
And note that the return type is IQueryable so you could do any filter, Order or grouping operation on it before hitting the database.
hope this helped
No fix-all answer i'm afraid, every way has a compromise.
I've used both the database approach (10+ language dependent tables) and the resource file approach in fairly large projects, if the data is static and doesn't change (i.e you don't charge a different price or whatever) I would definately consider abstracting language away from your database model and using Resource keys then loading your data from files.
The reason or this is the problem you are experiencing right now where you can't filter includes (this may have changed in EF6 perhaps? I know it's on the list of things to do). You might be able to get away with reading it into memory and filtering them though like you're doing but this meant it wasn't very performant for us and I had to write Stored Procedures that I just passed the iso language and executed in EF.
From a maintenance point of view it was easier as well, for the DB project I had to write an admin console so people could log on and edit values for different languages etc. Using resource files I just copy-pasted the values into excel and emailed them to the people we use to translate.
It depends on the complexity of your project and what you prefer, i'd still consider both approaches in future.
TLDR: options that i've found are:
1) filter in memory
2) lazy load with filter
3) write stored procedure to EF and map that result
4) use resources instead
Hope this helps
EDIT: After looking at diagram it looks like you may need to search against the language dependant values? In that case resources probably won't work. If you're just letting them navigate off a menu then you're good to go.

Entity Framework: Get Model with Linked Models in Many to Many Relationship

I'm coming from TSQL + C# land and have been trying to adapt to linq and EF. Many-to-many relationships have been tripping me up. I have models with many-to-many relationships that I want to query from a database. Such as:
class Product{
public int ID {get;set;}
public string ProductName {get;set;}
public virtual ICollection<Tag> Tags {get;set;}
}
class Tag {
public int ID {get;set;}
public string TagName {get;set;}
public virtual ICollection<Product> Products {get;set;}
}
I'm able to get a product itself out of the DbContext, and then later fetch it's associated Tags like this:
// product exists in memory as a Product with an empty product.Tags
var query = from p in db.Product
from t in db.Tags
where p.ID == product.ID
select p.Tags;
Then I can assign the product.Tags with the fetched Tags. Obviously, this is very inefficient when dealing with multiple products if I have to query for every product.
With linq and EF, I want to be able to get a Product with all of its associated Tags in one round trip to the database. Also, I want to be able to get all Products and their associated Tags (or a filtered list of Products). How do would the linq look?
Edit:
Ok, after some more fiddling around, I've got this:
var query = db.Product.Include("Tags")
.Where(p => p.Tags.Any(t => t.Products.Select(m => m.ID).Contains(p.ID)));
This is almost what I need. The results are all products with tags. Missing are the products that don't have tags. I think of this as the equivalent of a SQL inner join. I want to left outer join the tags to the product, and return all products with tags optional. How to get all products with their associated tags without excluding products that have no tags?
Edit:
This was easier than I thought.
var query2 = db.Product.Include("Tags").DefaultIfEmpty();
This gets all the products and their respective tags, including products without tags. Hopefully it works for the right reasons...
The purpose of using an object-relational mapper like EF is that it maps relationships for you. If you are manually joining objects that have foreign keys in the database, you are doing it wrong.
See my question Why use LINQ Join on a simple one-many relationship?
The correct answer is simply context.Products.Include("Tags"), which will auto-magically join Products and Tags for you. This is literally the biggest (only?) benefit of using an ORM.

How to access extra data in Many-to-Many relationship in CoolStorage?

I'm using CoolStorage in a project where I have some Many-to-Many relationships. Some of the join tables have extra data on them which describe the relationship.
For example: Table Alpha, Beta, and AlphaBeta.
Many-to-Many relationship between Alpha and Beta is stored in AlphaBeta. Primary key of AlphaBeta is the combination of the keys from Alpha(AlphaID) and Beta(BetaID), which is (AlphaID, BetaID).
But AlphaBeta also has some additional data like 'DisplayOrder INT NOT NULL'
in the data classes, I have the Many-to-Many relationships defined using the [ManyToMany("AlphaBeta", pure=true)] attribute, but how can I access the DisplayOrder for each?
I don't think it matters, but this is a Windows Phone app using SQLite.
If you have additional fields in your link table, you have to set "pure = false" and add a data object for the link table.
Your link data object might look like this:
[MapTo("AlphaBeta")]
public abstract class AlphaBeta : CSObject<AlphaBeta>
{
[ManyToOne]
public abstract Alpha Aplha { get; set; }
[ManyToOne]
public abstract Beta Beta { get; set; }
public abstract int DisplayOrder { get; set; }
}

Resources