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2.12.2. Creating the Application

Step 1 - Create the Visual Studio Projects.

  1. Open

    Visual Studio

    and create a new

    Silverlight Application

    project. Call the project DemoApplication.

  2. In the New Silverlight Application dialog ensure that

    Enable .NET RIA Services

    is checked. Click the

    OK

    button.

    Figure 2.171. .NET RIA Services Application

    .NET RIA Services Application

At this point a skeleton solution is created that consists of a client project called DemoApplication and a server project called DemoApplication.Web. This application will use data from the Virtuoso database. We add the data and its schema to the application by adding an ADO.NET entity data model to the server project.

Step 2 - Add the Data Model

  1. Right click the server project in the

    Solution Explorer

    and

    Add New Item

    . In the dialog box select

    ADO.NET Entity Data Model

    and call it demo.edmx. Click the

    Add

    button. This will open the

    Entity Data Model Wizard

    .

  2. Choose

    Generate From Database

    and click

    Next

    .

  3. Set up a connection to the Demo database on your local Virtuoso Server, select

    Yes, include the sensitive data in the connection string

    and set the name of the entities to DemoEntities. Click

    Next

    .

  4. On the

    Choose Your Database Objects

    page expand

    Tables

    and select Employees. Check that the Model Namespace is DemoModel and click

    Finish

    .

Figure 2.172. .NET RIA Services Application

.NET RIA Services Application

We want to make the entities in the model available to both the client and server parts of the solution. To do this we need to add a DomainService to the solution. However, to make the entities from the data model available to the domain service we must first build the solution.

Step 3 - Add a Domain Service.

  1. First build the solution.

  2. Right click the server project in the

    Solution Explorer

    and

    Add New Item

    . In the dialog box choose

    Domain Service Class

    from the Templates pane and call it EmployeeService.cs. Click

    Add

    . This will open the

    Add New Domain Service Class

    dialog.

  3. The entities from the model we have just added to the project are listed under

    Entities

    . Tick the box next to Employees. and click OK.

Figure 2.173. .NET RIA Services Application

.NET RIA Services Application

This will create the DomainService class and generated code in both the client and server parts of the application. The Silverlight client can now interact with the data through the DomainContext class in the client project. At this point you need to build the solution again.

Step 4 - Display The Data

  1. From the

    Silverlight XAML Controls

    in the

    Toolbox

    drag a

    DataGrid

    between the <Grid> </Grid> tags on MainPage.xaml in the client. Call the grid EmployeeGrid. 

    <data:DataGrid Name="EmployeeGrid"></data:DataGrid>

  2. Instantiate the DomainContext to get the list of employees and add them to the grid by adding code to MainPage.xaml.cs so it looks like this: 

    using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Documents;
using System.Windows.Input;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Media.Animation;
using System.Windows.Shapes;
using DemoApplication.Web;
using System.Windows.Ria.Data;

namespace DemoApplication
{
    public partial class MainPage : UserControl
    {
        private EmployeeContext _employeeContext = new EmployeeContext();
        public MainPage()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            LoadOperation<Employees> LoadOp =
                this._employeeContext.Load(this._employeeContext.GetEmployeesQuery());
            this.EmployeeGrid.ItemsSource = LoadOp.Entities;
        }
    }
}

  3. Build and run the application. Internet Explorer will be launched and you will see the data displayed on the page as a grid.

Figure 2.174. .NET RIA Services Application

.NET RIA Services Application

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