ASP.NET MVC Example Application over Northwind with the Entity Framework

Over last month over the holidays, Lance Olson and I spent some time porting ScottGu's excellent MVC example over the Entity Framework.  I thought I'd share the results here and get your thoughts\feedback.

 

12-11-08:  I updated a few links and the example to match latest bits. 

For this example, you will need:

 

If you are the type that likes to eat your desert first, you can skip to the end and just download the full working solution (Update: download this version of the sample that works with latest bits). 

 

Getting Started

File/New Project - Select ASP.NET MVC Web Application and Test

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This creates a single solution with both a web application project as well as a project we can use for unit testing.   Both are pre-populated with the basic stuff you need to get going.

 

 

Creating the Routes

One of the powerful new features that ASP.NET MVC brings to the table is the ability to customize the URLs that access your application. The URL routing feature explicitly breaks the connection between physical files on disk and the URL that is used to access a given bit of functionality.   This is important for Search Engine Optimization as well as general usability of the website.    For example, rather than access https://localhost/Products/ItemDetails.aspx?item=42 you can now very give a pretty URL such as https://localhost/Products/CodFishOil 

This is done by creating a route table in the global.asax file in the MVC Application.   Luckily for us, the defaults included in the template work perfectly this application. 

 RouteTable.Routes.Add(new Route
{
    Url = "[controller]/[action]/[id]",
    Defaults = new { action = "Index", id = (string)null },
    RouteHandler = typeof(MvcRouteHandler)
});

This code spells out the format of the URLs we want to use for our site.  In particular, a URL of the format

https://localhost/Products/Details/CodFishOil

would translate to the ProductsController class (notice we add the "Controller" suffix to the class name to make these classes stand out in the object model at design time).  Then the Action is a method on that class called Details and finally the argument to that details method is CodFishOil. 

It is of course possible to have other formats, simply by changing he regular expression in the URL pattern string.

 

Creating the Model

The model represents the data you are going to use in the application.   In our case, this is a pretty good place to start the core of the application. 

In the App_Data direction of the MVCApplication copy the Northwind.mdf file.  Northwind is likely the most common example database we have for SqlServer... You can download it from the official location, or for just the raw file, feel free to grab it from here.

image

Next, we need to create a LINQ model on top of northwind to make it easier to work with... You can do this with NHibernate, LinqToSql, Entity Framework , or any other .NET OR-Mapping technology.  As long as it results in .NET Object, the ASP.NET MVC framework can work with it.  In this case I am going to use the Entity Framework.

Right click on the Models directory and select add new item

image

In the dialog select ADO.NET Entity Data Model.

In the wizard, select "Generate from Database" and then go with the default "Northwnd" connection string.

For our demo, we are only going to use the Categories, Products and Suppliers tables, but you could of course extend this demo to include a richer feature set.  But for now, unselect the Views and Stored Procedures and all the tables except those three..

image

When you click finished, VS will create a set of .NET classes that are custom built for accessing this database and we get a nice designer for visualizing the data relationships.

image

Notice, that the default names given to these classes still use the plural names from the database, but in our OR-Mapping they represent single instances, so to make the code easier to read, go in and change all the table names to their appropriate singular form: Category, Product and Supplier.   Then Navigation properties on Product needs to be singular as there is only one Category and Suppler for each product.

image

Next we need to cleanup the namespace so things look pretty in our code... Right click on the design surface then set the properties such that namespace is "NorthwindModels" and the Entity Container name to "NorthWindEntities"

image

 

While we are not 100% done with the model, we have gotten the lion's share of it complete.. Let's switch over and look at the controller.

Creating the Controller

Right click on the Controller directory and select "Add new Item".  In the dialog find MVC Controller and be sure to give it a name that ends in the Controller suffix.  In our case we are writing the ProductsController. 

image

OK, we are ready to start working in  ProductsController.cs

The goal of the controller is to prepare the model for the view.    We want to bring as much logical as possible out of the view because it is so hard to test in the view.  So in the controller, we are going to be accessing the Model and getting it all set up so all the view has to do is spit out some data. 

The first thing we need, is access to our database. 

1. Add the right namespaces... Linq and a reference to our OR mapping.

 using System.Linq;
using NorthwindModel;

2. Next, we create an instance of the NorthwindEntities container class.  Nearly all of our actions will access this class.

     public class ProductsController : Controller
    {
        NorthwindEntities Northwind = new NorthwindEntities(); 

 

OK, now we are ready to create our first action.. Listing all the categories.  Remember the job of the controller is to prepare the model for the view..   When defining a new action, I like to start off by putting a comment that reminds me what the URL is that access this functionality. 

The next thing we do is access the Categories table from the model.  I snap the results to a generic collection class (you may have to add a reference to System.Collections.Generic) then we pass the results to the view named "Categories".    This is a very simple example, later we will see more complex logic here. 

//URL: https://localhost/Products/Categories
[ControllerAction]
public void Categories()
{
    List<Category> categories = Northwind.Categories.ToList();
    RenderView("Categories", categories);
}

Next step, we need to create the "Categories" view..

Creating the View

Right click on the Views folder, add new Directory "Products".  This so we can organize all our views cleanly.  The Right click on Views/Products folder and add new item MVC View Content Page.  We are going to leverage the Master Page that comes with the default project to make this look a little more pretty. 

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Call it Categories.aspx... It is important that the view name matches the first argument to the RenderView method above.

The default project puts the master page in Views/Shared/Site.Master

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In order to get the strongly typed access to the ViewData we are passing in from the controller, we need to tell the View Page, the type to expect.  This is done by opening up the codebehind (Categories.aspx.cs) and changing the derived type from:

     public partial class Categories : ViewPage
    {
    }
to:
 public partial class Categories : ViewPage< List<Category> > 
{
}

Then you simply write clean, simple, designable HTML.  Notice here I am looping over all the items returned in ViewData and pushing them out as a link.  I use the MVC helper method Html.ActionLink to create the URL for the List action with the appropriate product ID. 

 

     <h2>Browse Products</h2>

    <ul class="categorylisting">
    
      <% foreach (var category in ViewData) { %>
    
        <li>
            <%= Html.ActionLink(category.CategoryName, new { action="List", id=category.CategoryName }) %>            
        </li>
    
      <% } %>
        
    </ul>

OK, we are finally ready to run it! 

Hit F5, and navigate to the controller action we just wrote on https://localhost:64701/products/Categories 

image

Clicking on any of the links give you an error, because we haven't written the List action yet.. we will do that next. 

As an aside, if like me, you are in the habit of using "View in Browser" on aspx pages you develop, you are likely to see this error.  To reproduce, right click on Categories.aspx and select View in browser. 

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You get an error. Why?  Well, remember with the MVC model, all execution goes through the controller, the views themselves are not runnable.   Future tooling will make this better, but in the mean time, use F5 or you can "run in browser" with default.aspx.. just be sure you have built the solution first!

 

The List Action, View

OK, let's now go back and add the List action that we are missing.  What we need to do here is find all the products with a give Category.   First I need to get all the products out of the model, then I need to ensure that the Category references are loaded.  The entity framework offers an explicit loading model by default.  As such you have to explicitly load any tables you need.  And finally we render the view. 

 

 //example URL:https://localhost:64701/products/List/Confections
[ControllerAction]
public void List(string id)
{
    List<Product> products = Northwind.GetProductsByCategory(id);

    //prepare the view by explicitly loading the categories  
    products.FindAll(p => p.Category == null).ForEach(p => p.CategoryReference.Load());

    RenderView("ListingByCategory", products);

}

Notice, i am calling a custom method on the NorthwindDataContext class... Personally I like the idea of keeping all the data access logic encapsulated in that class.  So to define this method, Right click on the Model, add new Item, select CodeFile and name it NorthwindDataContext.cs and give it the implementation.

 using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

namespace NorthwindModel
{
    public partial class NorthwindEntities
    {

    }
}

 

Now you can easily add data access methods to this class... such as the GetProductsByCategory() method we use above. 

 public List<Product> GetProductsByCategory(string category)
{
    return Products.Where(p => p.Category.CategoryName == category).ToList();
}

Next, we need to add the ListingByCategory view... We follow the same steps from above to add a ListingByCategory.aspx page in the Views/Products/ directory. 

This time, we should make the ViewData be of type List<Products>

 public partial class ListingByCategory : ViewPage< List<Product> > 
 {
 }

Next, to implement the view, we simply loop over the view data and spit it out in the right format.

   
<%--Print out the catagory name--%>  
  <% foreach (var product in ViewData) { %>
  <% if (product.Category.CategoryName != null) {  %> 
    <h2>  <%=product.Category.CategoryName  %></h2> 
    <% break; %>
 <%} //end if %>
 <%}//end foreach %>
        
    <ul class="productlist">
    
        <% foreach (var product in ViewData) { %>
        
            <li>
                <img src="/Content/Images/<%=product.ProductID%>.jpg" alt="<%=product.ProductName %>" /> 
                <br/> 
                <a href="/Products/Detail/<%=product.ProductID %>"> <%=product.ProductName %> </a>
                <br />
                Price: <%=String.Format("{0:C2}", product.UnitPrice)%> 
                  <span class="editlink"">
                    (<%= Html.ActionLink("Edit", new { Action="Edit", ID=product.ProductID })%>)
                </span>
           
            </li>
    
        <% } %>
        
    </ul>

Once you add the /Content/Images directory from the sample project you get this:

image

 

Unit Testing

One of the primary  reasons for using the MVC model is to enable Test Driven Development and more generically Unit Testing.  Unit testing UIs is notoriously difficult.  Automation is fragile and hiring an army of testers to click on buttons is not always cost effective.  The model MVC is going for is to separate out as much code (and therefore potential bugs) as possible into the Model and the Controller where they are testable.

So, we are going to write Unit Tests for the two control methods we just created and the corresponding logic in the model. 

First, we need to setup our testing environment.  The default template already created a Test project we can start to customize. 

1. In the MvcApplicationTest project, create a new class called ProductControllerTest.cs

2. Add a method for testing the Categories action we defined above.

 namespace MvcApplicationTest.Controllers
{

    [TestClass]
    public class ProductsControllerTest
    {

        [TestMethod]
        public void Categories()
        {

        }
    }

3. We want to test the controller we wrote, but we don't want to load IIS and all of ASP.NET... we want to have the leanest, most simple system we can to avoid test breaks, etc.   To that end, I created a test specific subclass of the ProductsController we defined above.  In this subclass I override the RenderView method.  Instead of calling out to ASP.NET, my test specific implement simply captures the arguments so they can be queried later in the test.

 class TestProductsController : ProductsController
{
    public string ViewName { get; set; }
    public string MasterName { get; set; }
    public new object ViewData { get; set; }
    protected override void RenderView(string viewName, string masterName, object viewData)
    {
        ViewData = viewData;
        MasterName = masterName;
        ViewName = viewName;
    }
  }

 

4. Now we implement the test!  First we create an instance of our test controller, then I create some dummy  (or mock) data.  The idea here is that we don't want to hit the production database (or any database for that mater) in our tests.  We want exactly the data we need for the test, no more, no less.  Then we set up the NorthwindDataContext to use our data rather than the data from the database.  Then we call the controller action we are trying to test.  Finally, we assert a few things..  that the type of the ViewData is right, that the number  of items returned is right, etc.   Notice, you will need to add a reference to the EntityFramework (System.Data.Entity.dll) in your test project to use these EF generated types like Product, Category, etc. 

 

 [TestMethod]
public void Categories()
{
    // Create Products Controller
    TestProductsController controller = new TestProductsController();

    List<Category> l = new List<Category>();
    l.Add(new Category() { CategoryName = "Drink" });
    l.Add(new Category() { CategoryName = "Food" });
    l.Add(new Category() { CategoryName = "Cheese" });

    controller.Northwind.TheCategories = l.AsQueryable();

    // Invoke Controller Action
    controller.Categories();

    // Verify Detail Action Behavior
    Assert.AreEqual(typeof(List<Category>),
                     controller.ViewData.GetType(),
                     "Product object Passed to View");

    Assert.AreEqual(3,
                     ((List<Category>)controller.ViewData).Count,
                     "Correct Number of Catagories returned");

    Assert.AreEqual("Food",
                     ((List<Category>)controller.ViewData)[1].CategoryName,
                     "Correct Product Object Passed to View");

    Assert.AreEqual("Categories",
                     controller.ViewName,
                     "Correct View Rendered");

}

5. Set the connection string in the test project so that it access the metadata from EF model, but does not open the database.  In MVCApplicationTest add an app.config file to the root of the project with the this connection string.

 <?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
  <connectionStrings>
    <add name="NorthwindEntities"
         connectionString="metadata=res://*/;provider=System.Data.SqlClient;"
         providerName="System.Data.EntityClient" />
  </connectionStrings>
</configuration>

 

Now, we need to go back to the EDM designer and set it to embed the metadata for the model as part of the assembly.  This makes our connection string above much more simple.  Double click on the edmx file, then click on the conceptual model in the model browser and in the property sheet you change the property Metadata Artifact Processing from “Copy to Output Directory” to “Embed in  Output Assembly”

 image

 

6. Now we need to do just a bit of setup in the MVCApplication to enable a great testing experience... There are a few tricks here and what I am showing is NOT the definitive model (there isn't a definitive model yet)... but I like it, so what the heck!

MVCApplication/Model/NorthwindDataContext.cs add the following encapsulation of the Categories property. 

 

 private IQueryable<Product> savedProducts = null;
public IQueryable<Product> TheProducts
{
    get
    {
        if (savedProducts == null) savedProducts = this.Products;
        return savedProducts;
    }
    set
    {
        savedProducts = value;
    }
}

Then, make sure that all access go through this abstraction.  For example:

 public List<Product> GetProductsByCategory(string category)
{
    return TheProducts.Where(p => p.Category.CategoryName == category).ToList();
}

Finally, we need to make sure the NorthwindEntities is accessible from the test classes, so in ProductsController.cs add the "public" modifier.

 public NorthwindEntities Northwind = new NorthwindEntities();

 

Now, we are able to run our test.  You can do this by setting the test project as being the "startup project" (right click on the test project) or you can select Test/Run menu option. 

image

 

Well, that is the lap around MVC+EF... There is a lot more to the sample I posted.  If there is interest and I get the time, I will walk through the rest in future blog posts, but all the source code is there, so you can have fun with it on your own!

 

Enjoy!

You can download the full working example here (Updated to work with latest bits).