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ASP.NET Dynamic Data based data management system


Concept


I have been working with ASP.NET for a long time. When developing many projects, I have often come across the fact that data management operations of the same type take too much time. Naturally, there are CMS systems for websites, and for more complex systems there are various template page generators that create templates for editing and viewing information. But I wanted to get a more universal tool, which at the same time would not impose restrictions on the process of building the application architecture.

In this case, CMS systems immediately fell away, because when using any CMS developer loses the opportunity to build his architecture for a specific task and must try to squeeze in his CMS paradigm. I already wrote about this in more detail in one of my publications . When building a complex web application, CMS hinders the process altogether.

Having researched what existed for the .NET platform at that time, I chose the ASP.NET Dynamic Data system. It became the core of the Data Management System. The main idea of ​​this system is the complete separation of data management (backend) and systems interacting with end users (frontend). And in many of my projects, not only web applications act as frontend systems, but also desktop applications, mobile applications and client applications of which are not implemented on the .NET platform.

This is achieved due to the fact that integration occurs at the DBMS level, and not at the module level of the system:
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This approach allows you to quickly get ready-made tools for data management and does not impose architectural restrictions on the main application. Which in turn helps to focus efforts on building the application.

Technologies and components used in the project




Metadata Generation Tool




The metadata generation tool allows you to automate the process of creating partial-classes for the classes generated by the Entity Frameowrk.
Partial classes are placed in a separate directory and contain metadata for each of the playlists.
Some fields are automatically marked with appropriate metadata, for example, a field containing “Content” in its name will automatically receive attributes such as [Browsable (false)] and [UIHint (Control.Html)]. That is, the field will not be displayed in lists and tables, and the wysiwyg editor CKEditor will be created for it as an editor ( I want to make a small digression here and say that since I could not find the current version 4 of CKEditor in the NuGet catalog, I I created my own package in which I plan to support the current versions of the editor. The package is here: nuget.org/packages/xckeditor ) After the files with partial classes are generated, the metadata can be corrected manually and added to the project containing the base model data.

Primary system configuration


To configure the system, you need to specify the value of such fields in the web.cofig file as:


You also need to add to the configuration file a connection string to the database from the main web application.

Sample configuration file (web.config)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <configuration> <configSections> <section name="entityFramework" type="System.Data.Entity.Internal.ConfigFile.EntityFrameworkSection, EntityFramework, Version=5.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" requirePermission="false" /> </configSections> <connectionStrings> <add name="Entities" connectionString="metadata=res://*/DataModel.csdl|res://*/DataModel.ssdl|res://*/DataModel.msl;provider=System.Data.SqlClient;provider connection string="data source=sql.example.com;initial catalog=exampledb;persist security info=True;user id=user;password=p@ssw0rd;MultipleActiveResultSets=True;App=EntityFramework"" providerName="System.Data.EntityClient" /> </connectionStrings> <appSettings> <add key="webpages:Version" value="2.0" /> <add key="webpages:Enabled" value="true" /> <add key="enableSimpleMembership" value="false" /> <add key="autoFormsAuthentication" value="false" /> <add key="PreserveLoginUrl" value="true" /> <add key="ClientValidationEnabled" value="true" /> <add key="UnobtrusiveJavaScriptEnabled" value="true" /> <add key="Title" value="Andrew Gubskiy" /> <add key="Logo" value="http://example.com/images/logo.png" /> <add key="RootLogin" value="user" /> <add key="RootPassword" value="p@ssw0rd" /> <add key="WebsiteUrl" value="http://example.com/" /> <add key="WebsiteStorageConnectionString" value="ftp://user:password@example.com/site/wwwroot/" /> <add key="FileStorageConnectionString" value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=http;AccountName=somecaaountname;AccountKey=som1ea21kk2o5uts53nskey==" /> <add key="FileStorageUrl" value="http://somename.blob.core.windows.net/example-com-container/" /> <add key="DataContextAssemblyLocation" value="C:\www\admin.example.com\dal.dll" /> <add key="BlobContainerName" value="example-com-container" /> </appSettings> <system.web> <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.5"> <assemblies> <add assembly="System.Web.Entity, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089" /> <add assembly="System.Data.Entity, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089" /> </assemblies> </compilation> <httpRuntime requestValidationMode="2.0" targetFramework="4.5"></httpRuntime> <roleManager enabled="true" /> <membership defaultProvider="XMembershipProvider"> <providers> <clear /> <add name="XMembershipProvider" type="X.DynamicData.Core.XMembershipProvider" /> </providers> </membership> <authentication mode="Forms"> <forms name=".auth_dms" loginUrl="~/System/Login.aspx" protection="All" path="/" timeout="30" /> </authentication> <pages controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion="4.0"> </pages> </system.web> <entityFramework> <defaultConnectionFactory type="System.Data.Entity.Infrastructure.LocalDbConnectionFactory, EntityFramework"> <parameters> <parameter value="v11.0" /> </parameters> </defaultConnectionFactory> </entityFramework> <runtime> <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1"> <dependentAssembly> <assemblyIdentity name="WebGrease" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" culture="neutral" /> <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-1.3.0.0" newVersion="1.3.0.0" /> </dependentAssembly> </assemblyBinding> </runtime> </configuration>



After the system is configured, you will immediately see an interface like this that you can see in the illustration:


File upload


Initially it was assumed that the management system and the web application will be located on the same server, and therefore file downloads were supported only for directly into the web application directory.
In the new version there is no such restriction - now the management system and the web application can be located on different hostings.
In total, there are three options for interacting with the web application file storage:
  1. File system
  2. FTP
  3. Windows Azure Blob Storage Cloud Storage


The control system and the web application are on the same server.

In this case, in the parameters WebsiteUrl , WebsiteStorageConnectionString , FileStorageUrl and FileStorageConnectionString you need to set the paths to the corresponding directories of the web application.

The control system and the web application are located on different server servers (via FTP)

In this case, the WebsiteStorageConnectionString and FileStorageConnectionString are filled with an FTP connection string of the form:
 ftp://user:password@example.com/wwwroot/site/  ftp://user:password@example.com/wwwroot/site/static


Web application deployed to Windows Azure (via Cloud Storage)

This access option besides filling in the WebsiteStorageConnectionString and FileStorageConnectionString parameters also implies specifying the name of the container in the Windows Azure storage: BlobContainerName

Differences from the original version of Dynamic Data




Join in



Anyone can get acquainted with the system.
Project source codes are available on GitHub .

Useful material


Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/181804/

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