Creating an enum/class from a Database Table - c#

I have a database table that essentially contains different types of things. I'll use animals as an example. I have a table called AnimalTypes:
AnimalTypes
{
ID:int,
Name:string
}
I then populate it with:
1:Dog,
2:Cat,
3:Fish
I would like to then have some sort of C# object created that functions similar to this enum be entirely read from the database:
enum AnimalTypes
{
Dog = 1,
Cat = 2,
Fish = 3
}
Is there a way to create an enum/class from a database table as described? I basically want to be able to reference things in the AnimalTypes table using intellisense and AnimalTypes.Dog as an example; I don't actually need an enum, just something that kind of functions like one. Is this possible?
Edit: I'm not really that thrilled about generating a DLL as I've seen in other related problems. I feel like this should be possible with reflection.
Lets suppose I don't need intellisense.

You will have to generate an assembly if you want to be able to use the enumeration or class at compilation time. Reflection happens at execution time so that won't give you intellisense.
This is a common problem - there are a set of distinct values in a database table and those values don't change often so they are modeled as an enum in the source code. This allows these somewhat static values to be easily used in a very readable way. The problem is that when the values do change, it would be nice if the enum changed as well.
The problem with trying to keep the enum and database in sync is that an automatic process doesn't change the fact that if you are changing the database it would be very unlikely that you would do so without having to roll new code to leverage the changed value. It is better to model these values as an enum and still store them in the database. Just manually sync them as the need arises.

Try this solution:
"Creating Enums from database lookup tables"
using T4 code generation for lookup tables.

There's always code generation: http://www.mygenerationsoftware.com/ if you don't want to go the reflection route.

Related

Dynamically create a class and then create a list<dynamicClass> based on it in C#

I want to create a class and its properties on run time, the properties will be like Year2001, Year2002, Year2003, Year2004, Year2005... I get these property names on run-time, I get them in a list. Later I need to use this class to create a list which I need to show in the kendo grid.I surfed a lot and thought of using ExpandoObject, but was unsuccessful.
If all properties will be of the form YearX and contain some information about or related to that year, then I would strongly recommend you (if at all possible) to go with something along the lines of an IList<YearInfo> where YearInfo is some object containing the info you need for every year, including an integer property indicating what year the object corresponds to. If you require these objects to be unique you could use an IDictionary<int, YearObject> or ISet<YearObject> instead.
Reflection can be powerful, but it it comes at the price of complexity and loss of type safety/compile-time checks. Avoid when possible.
Sounds to me like you are really wanting to a grid with grouping support. Your idea of having the system create a CLASS at runtime is not going to fly. Even if it were possible, which I doubt it is, it is absolutely the wrong approach.
Like I say - have a read about Grouping / Hierarchy on Grid Controls (Kendo grid example here), and maybe have a look at OLAP cubes as well...
Although you have had some answers I would also like to suggest an alternative way of doing this which is using DataTables. This is the approach I take when I have any "Dynamic" data sets that I want to present to the grid.
This is also the approach that Telerik themselves take with one of their code samples.
here are a couple of links to show them doing this to DataTables and Dynamic Objects
Grid Binding to Data Table
Grid Binding to Dynamic Objects
Personally I find the binding to Tables easier to deal with as I am used to dealing with Data Tables.

Best pratice to design this: enum in c# or separate database table

i am creating records in a table and one column is called TYPE. I am programmatically looping through an enum in c# and creating this rows. The enum contains types of things for example
car
plane
boat
...
An Important thing is, that this types are bound to a logic. One my question:
Should i put these types in the enum as described above or would it be better to put these in a separate table to have a normalize form.
What would you prefer?
Depends on two things:
Are values unstable?1
Do you need to attach additional information?2
If the answer to any of the above questions is "yes", then using a dedicated lookup table is probably a good idea. Otherwise, constant enum values3 that are well-known and well-documented throughout the system are OK.
The point is: don't use lookup tables blindly, as is sometimes suggested. They certainly have their place, but there are also cases where they should not be used.
1 Existing value can change or be deleted, or new values can be added.
2 Such as human-readable (and potentially localizable) name or description, or some way to drive the logic from the contents of the database as opposed to hard-coding.
3 Usually simple integers. If you find yourself needing to use strings, that probably means you should have answered "yes" to question (2).

Fill object from SQL result

I have a regular C# class called "vehicle" with properties like Name, NumberPlate, MaxSpeed, etc.
All the data for the class is stored in a SQLite Database where I have a Table "Car" and "Boat". The tables colums have the same names as the class properties (however, there are more columns than class properties - vehicle is a more generic abstraction). At the moment, I have to assign the result of the query individually one by one like this:
while (await statement.StepAsync())
{
myVehicle.Name = statement.Columns["Name"];
//[...]
myVehicle.MaxSpeed = decimal.TryParse(statement.Columns["MaxSpeed"]);
}
Additionally, I have to check if some columns exist ("Car" and "Boat" have a different set of columns) which is more code than I'd like it to be.
I read about EntityFramework to map my db table to my class - but that seems overkill. My requirement is to map properties and columns that have the same name and ignore everything else.
Is there a "easy" (dev time, lines of code) way to map my table columns to my class?
Thanks for reading!
The restrictions in phone 8 mean that a lot of the standard answers to this ("just use {some ORM / micro-ORM}") won't apply, since they don't work on phone 8. You can probably use reflection for a lot of this, but: reflection can be (relatively) slow, so it depends on how much data you will be processing. If it is occasional and light: fine, reflect away.
Runtime meta-programming (the tricks used by libraries like "dapper" in full .NET to make these things really fast) is not available on restricted runtimes, so if you want to avoid lots of boiler-plate that leaves build-time meta-programming. At the simplest, I wonder if you could use something like T4 to automate creating these methods for you as C#. There are also ways to use the reflection-emit API to construct assemblies (at build-time) for phone 8, but that is a pretty hard-core route.
My thoughts:
if the amount of types here isn't huge, just write the code
if you have a lot of types, or you just feel like it, consider a build-time code-generation meta-programming step; you might even think "hmm, is this something I could make available to the community?"
of course, the first thing to do is to check that such a thing doesn't already exist
There is a little helper which might fit your case. Basically, it will take a dictionary and try it's best to populate a objects properties using reflection. I didn't try it by myself though.
You'd simply do something like:
while (await statement.StepAsync())
{
myVehicle = DictionaryToObject<Car>(statement.Columns);
}
It might need some further work to get it running but maybe a good start.

Entity Framework 5 Enum that is built from a db table

I have those two entities :
Color entity is mapped to a table of constant values that represent colors.
Code=1, Name="Red"
Code=2, Name="Blue"
And so on...
In Car entity, the Color property is of type int and has a foreign key constraint to the Code property in Color entity. I want to convert the Color property in Car to an Enum, but the Enum should get it's values from Color table.
The Enum could be updated in each build action or an "update model" action in the designer.
Can this functionality can be achieved ?
" but the Enum should get it's values from Color table. "
So whats wrong with what you have? Anyway since you asked...
An enum is by definition inside the assembly. So as soon as a new color is added to the table you have an outdated Enum. But if you are ok with having upto date at build time. There is a good option.
Clearly the suggestion to use T4 is interesting . But the t4 would need to connect to DB and read it. When T4 goes beyond source generation, it can be easier to use a simple app. Unless of course you are already good at t4. So if t4 is a little hard for this task try:
A simple side app, that reads the DB and updates the EnumColor.cs would be plausible.
IE a simple console app. Place as a pre build step. The pre-build reads the DB, rewrites the enum.cs file and the compile/build then follows.
**Easy Alternative: using a Dictionary which you can extend at runtime **
Dictionary<int,string> colors
For me the first question is why? I had a similar technical need but the business need was to help with reporting. Enums works great to make code simpler to read and maintain, but is you have to create a report in say SSRS then you don't have access to the enums (okay I am sure some advanced SSRS users will say you can link in assemblies etc, but that is not the point). We played a bit with a prebuild script (could also run post build) to generate inline scaler function scripts to execute against the db. This way you could do select statements such as:
SELECT Model, fColorNameEnum(Color) FROM Car
This way you do not have to touch you reports again if you add a new element in your enum. I tend to use enums in the implementation of business logic, typically item status or workflow state. Adding a new option thus require adding new logic which means doing it in code. If you are never going to reason over the color value in code, then what is the reason for wanting to put it in an enum rather than just another linked object?

Is it bad practice to use an enum that maps to some seed data in a Database?

I have a table in my database called "OrderItemType" which has about 5 records for the different OrderItemTypes in my system. Each OrderItem contains an OrderItemType, and this gives me referential integrity. In my middletier code, I also have an enum which matches the values in this table so that I can have business logic for the different types.
My dev manager says he hates it when people do this, and I am not exactly sure why. Is there a better practice I should be following?
I do this all the time and I see nothing wrong with this. The fact of the matter is, there are values that are special to your application and your code needs to react differently to those values. Would your manager rather you hard-code an Int or a GUID to identify the Type? Or would he rather you derive a special object from OrderItem for each different Type in the database? Both of those suck much worse than an enum.
I don't see any problem in having enum values stored in the database, this actually prevents your code from dealing with invalid code types. After I started doing this I started to have fewer problems, actually. Does your manager offer any rationale for his hatred?
We do this, too. In our database we have an Int column that we map to an Enum value in the code.
If you have a real business concern for each of the specific types, then I would keep the enum and ditch it in the database.
The reason behind this approach is simple:
Every time you add an OrderType, you're going to have to add business logic for it. So that justifies it being in your business domain somewhere (whether its an enum or not). However, in this case having it in the database doesn't do anything for you.
I have seen this done for performance reasons but I think that using a caching mechanism would be perferable in most cases.
One alternative to help with the synchronization of the database values and the business logic enum values would be to use the EnumBuilder class to dynamically generate a .dll containing the current enum values from the database. Your business logic could then reference it, and have intellisense-supported synchonized enum values.
It's actually much less complicated than it sounds.
Here's a link to MSDN to explain how to dynamically build the enum.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.reflection.emit.enumbuilder.aspx
You just have to sub in the database access code to grab the enum values:
One more vote for you, I also use mapping database int <-> application enum, in addition, I usually describe my enums like this:
public enum Operation
{
[Description("Add item")]
AddItem = 0,
[Description("Remove item")]
RemoveItem = 1
}
which leaves me absolutely free to add new values without need to change database and with a very short workaround I can work i.e. with lists containing descriptions (that are very strongly tied to values!) - just a little bit of reflection reaches the goal!
In code, you can typically just add a property like this:
public class Order
{
public int OrderTypeInt;
public OrderTypeEnum OrderType
{
get { return (OrderTypeEnum)OrderTypeInt; }
set { OrderTypeInt = (int)value; }
}
}

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