CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#sql-servercode-generationdto
AZDev
AZDev

Reputation: 11

Tool to generate C# DTO Class for SQL Table AND DTO Instances for each Row in Table

I'm looking for for a tool or technique that will allow me to point to a table in a SQL Server Database, generate a DTO Class for that table AND then generate DTO Class INSTANCES for each row in that table.

Given a table in SQL Server

CREATE TABLE 
[dbo].[Tickets](
[TicketID] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
[TicketName] [varchar](50) NOT NULL,
CONSTRAINT [PK_Tickets] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([TicketID] ASC)

Populated with data:

TicketID   TicketName
1          Green
2          Blue

Would produce a class called "Tickets" with properties:

 public int TicketID {get;set;}
 public string TicketName {get;set;}

AND then something like:

public List<Tickets> LoadDataIntoListOfTickets()
{
     List<Tickets> theList = new List<Tickets>;
     theList.Add(new Ticket(){TicketID = 1, TicketName = "Green"});
     theList.Add(new Ticket(){TicketID = 2, TicketName = "Blue"});
     return theList;  
}

I don't want to generate INSERT statements to send to SQL Server. I want to create DTO Class and Instances for the Data.

Clarification: I'm looking to do a code generation of the DTO Class AND the source code for the DTO instances for each row of in the data as it exists AT A SPECIFIC POINT IN TIME. I'm familiar with the various ORM's that can create the classes. What I'm looking for is something that will generate the LoadDataIntoListOfTickets() listing with a line of source code for each ROW in the database. (Hopefully that makes it clear.)

Clarification #2: This is going to be used to replace having SQL INSERT statements in a text file for initializing tables when the user creates a new database for an application. Having a text file with the SQL INSERT statements allowed me to use traditional version control tools to manage our database initialization process. It works really well, but it isn't as human readable (whitespace / alignment) or re-usable as storing the data in DTO instances would be. Serializing to XML would reduce readability. Binary serialization would (by nature) make it NOT human readable and would also make it near impossible to do a meaningful compare/merge with previous versions.

Does anyone know of a tool or library that can do this ?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 4021

Answers (1)

AndreasKnudsen
AndreasKnudsen

Reputation: 3481

If what you are really after is a way to get a new database from containing nothing to it containing a database a schema and an initial set of data then I would HIGHLY recommend you looking into database migration tools. they will help you keep things human-readable and in sync on multiple installations / environments.

here you can find a few listed: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8033/database-migration-library-for-net

Personally I prefer https://github.com/dradovic/MigSharp

Upvotes: 1

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