SilverlightShow: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes Comments

Re: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

brian.noyes — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 15:51:38 GMT

I can't repro what you are describing with the sample code. When you select a Task and add a time entry, it is added to the selected task, and you can inspect the handling code in the view model and see that is the case. Selecting a different task and the time entry is no longer shown because it is not part of that task, go back to the one you added it to and it shows up. Its working as designed for me.

Re: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

JavidBahramzy — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 17:49:51 GMT

Thanks for these nice series on WCF RIA Services.

When adding a Time Entry, it's always added to the first Task in grid even thought I select another Task and try to add a Time Entry, it's added to the first one. Any idea how I can fix this problem?

Thanks for your time.

Re: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

HoudiniSutherland — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:13:36 GMT

Nice, but I am having a bit of trouble here. I am not using EF, I am using LINQ2SQL. Not there is no include method as you explained.

 public IQueryable GetTasks()

     return this.ObjectContext.Tasks.Include("TimeEntries").OrderBy(t=> t.StartDate);

I would believe Linq2Sql uses a LoadWith(), but that is not there either. Any help?

Re: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

brian.noyes — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:10:15 GMT

Its been a while since I have done L2S - thought it eager loaded by default. But unfortunately can't coach you on how to get data loaded with L2S here since I don't use it. Bottom line, if you can confirm the data access pattern with L2S that would get the data loaded on the server if you were to loop over the IQueryable then it will work from there like EF. The other thing I am not sure of is if the L2S entities include the right attributes (i.e. Association attribute) to make sure things get transfered properly.

Re: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

HoudiniSutherland — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:26:15 GMT

Nice, but I am having a bit of trouble here. I am not using EF, I am using LINQ2SQL. Not there is no include method as you explained.

 public IQueryable GetTasks()

     return this.ObjectContext.Tasks.Include("TimeEntries").OrderBy(t=> t.StartDate);

I would believe Linq2Sql uses a LoadWith(), but that is not there either. Any help?

Re: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

HoudiniSutherland — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:03:10 GMT

Nice, but I am having a bit of trouble here. I am not using EF, I am using LINQ2SQL. Not there is no include method as you explained.

 public IQueryable GetTasks()

     return this.ObjectContext.Tasks.Include("TimeEntries").OrderBy(t=> t.StartDate);

I would believe Linq2Sql uses a LoadWith(), but that is not there either. Any help?

Re: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

brian.noyes — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:40:48 GMT

Benoit73, that is fixed in the source code for the next article I believe. Demo-ware, not intended to have every function working.

Re: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Benoit73 — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 01:24:01 GMT

The OKbutton event was not associated and the delete time entries does not delete the selected one. There is nothing in the method.

Re: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Oged — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 10:43:31 GMT

good

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Brian Noyes — Mon, 30 May 2011 15:02:00 GMT

Oh, and I should also mention that with SP1 (which is installed with VS 2010 SP1), there is an improvement in the way the classes get generated from a single domain service project so that multiple domain services can expose the same entity type.

But if you have links to the server projects in a client project, that project should have generated types for the domain context, entity types, and any .shared. classes.

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Brian Noyes — Mon, 30 May 2011 14:59:58 GMT

Hi Teun,

You can control which server project a client points to through the WCF RIA Services Link setting in the Silverlight project. But you always have to have a 1:1 relationship there. See part 9 about structuring projects to get better idea of how all that works.

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Teun — Mon, 30 May 2011 14:56:51 GMT

Hi Brian,

is it possible to control in which projects shared classes are generated?

Because I have one project for the data classes and it is used in several ria service projects. But in some services not all classes are used/generated. This means that in some services I have the shared validation classes are generated and not the data class so I get a compile errors in the generated code (for example: var user = context.ObjectInstance as User).

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Brian Noyes — Tue, 24 May 2011 19:31:55 GMT

Your entities will only show up if a) they are Entity Framework generated entities as part of a Entity Data Model, and b) that model is either in your domain service project or a referenced assembly. You do have to build before they will show up too.

There is no magic to the wizard with respect to the metadata class, you can create the same setup with Add New Class, define a partial type for your entity type, put the MetadataType attribute on it to point to the metadata class, and then define the properties you want to add attributes to on the metadata class.

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Subt13 — Tue, 24 May 2011 19:26:09 GMT

Great article. How does one generate the .meta.cs file without using the checkbox? I have an issue where none of my entities show up in the dialog.

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Myles Johnson — Thu, 19 May 2011 16:57:11 GMT

Great article. Thanks.

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Femi Oyekan — Mon, 02 May 2011 03:21:28 GMT

Very concise, extremely helpful. Thanks.

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Brian Noyes — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:56:42 GMT

Hi Jason, (and for the benefit of anyone else with the same question)

System.Windows.Interactivity and Microsoft.Expression.Interaction libraries are part of the Expression Blend SDK, which is a freely downloadable and distributable library even if you don't have Blend. It includes a number of built in behaviors from Blend as well as the base classes to build your own and the attached properties to attach those behaviors to your elements in XAML.

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Jason Wang — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 09:05:04 GMT

hi mentor,

the namespace looks like System.Windows.Interactivity that isn't find out from your sample. Could you give me some guildlines to solve this issue. Thanks a lot!

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

nikunj — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 06:41:36 GMT

Really helpful post..

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

terry.bayles@att.net — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 22:25:33 GMT

do you have the instuction book I can print out since I lost mine to the Ria studiotrack 4 model no.R504 I cannot get it to work properly. I would appriciate it or if you know where I Can find it. so I may print it ou. thank you. terry

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Brian Noyes — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 02:27:26 GMT

Sam,

Not sure I know what you mean. If you are really meaning page to page, you would leave the Silverlight application so it wouldn't apply. If you mean navigating from one logical page or screen to another within the Silverlight application, MVVM doesn't really address that at all. MVVM is all about how a view model supports a single view. It doesn't address how you navigate from view to view. For a couple ways to tackle that challenge, you can either use the Silverlight Navigation Framework or use Prism 4 navigation. The former is part of Silverlight, pick up a good book on Silverlight such as Silverlight 4 Unleashed or Silverlight 4 in Action, and the latter you can download and read about in the docs at prism.codeplex.com.

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

sam — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 21:08:53 GMT

How can Pass Id from one page to other using MVVM

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Brian Noyes — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 00:44:06 GMT

Watch all the episodes of Silverlight TV. :)

Prism is a framework for building loosely coupled, composite applications. It has features for building up your app out of loosely coupled modules, dynamically composing the UI out of loosely coupled UI parts, and having loosely coupled communications between those modules and their classes with commands and events. You can find out more by reading the book-style documentation that comes with the download at prism.codeplex.com, and it will also be released in Print form through O'Reilly in Feb timeframe, titled Developers Guide to Microsoft Prism 4 (I co-authored).

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

aarti291184 — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 19:16:41 GMT

Hi Brian,

I already have added all the attributes as per you mentioned in your reply but still its not coming.

Thanks for the books

Could you also recommend some video's links for the Silverlight

whats the role of prism in Silverlight?

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Brian Noyes — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 11:52:23 GMT

Are you using the code download and modifying it or trying to code it up yourself? The download code should display a validation error (red box) on the Description field with a tooltip if you hover over the little red triangle in the upper right corner of that control. If that is not showing up with the unmodified code from the download, not sure why that would be.

If you are coding it up yourself, you also need the binding on the textbox to enable validation for INotifyDataErrorInfo and exceptions:

Text="{Binding Description, Mode=TwoWay, ValidatesOnNotifyDataErrors=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=true, NotifyOnValidationError=True}"

For learning Silverlight in general, I'd strongly recommend the following two books:

Silverlight 4 Unleashed, Laurent Bunion

Silverlight 4 in Action, Pete Brown

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

aarti291184 — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 07:30:48 GMT

Hi Brian,

My mandatory message is not coming with the description textbox in the UI even if i added required attribute with respect to Description field in the TimeEntryMetadata

what else i need to add it for coming validation message?

Plz guide me

I am new in the Silverlight

And also give me guidance for how to learn Silverlight step by step

Thanks in advance

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Brian Noyes — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:03:16 GMT

aarti291184:

Not clear what you mean with respect to "by using metadata classes". I've just confirmed on a clean machine that downloading the code, running the SQL script against a default SQL Server instance, and running works fine. If you ran the SQL script against a non-default instance of SQL (i.e. Express), you will have to modify the connection string in the web.config to reflect that to get the code to run. There are no time entries in the DB with the default data, just four tasks. But you should be able to add time entries to any of the tasks.

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

aarti291184 — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 07:59:50 GMT

Hi Brian,

When I tried this post on yesterday ,I did not get data for Tasks and Time Entry entities by using metadata classes

Can you plz help me

what was the issue?

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Geert — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:19:44 GMT

yup that's done the trick, saved me 25% in data transfer :D

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Geert — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:24:55 GMT

yup that's done the trick, saved me 25% in data transfer :D

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Brian Noyes — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 17:30:05 GMT

Sure, only declare the partial class for your DTO in the client side project. You can still enhance the client side class yourself through partial class extensions in the client project in addition to what gets code generated and shared with the server side.

Another example where you have to do this is if you want to have property change events fire, you override the partial methods defined in the code generated client class for each property changing.

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Geert — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:51:59 GMT

when I add some code like

public string ShortDescription

{

get

{

if ((!string.IsNullOrEmpty(Description)) && (Description.Length > 200))

return Description.Substring(0, 200);

return Description;

}

where Description is a property of my DTO class defined as

public string Description { get; set; }

into a shared.cs, the content of the property ShortDescription is sent over the wire to the client. Is there a way to execute the ShortDescription logic on the client only?

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Brian Noyes — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 07:50:33 GMT

Bruce: The shared code files declared on the server side are code generated (copied) to the client side project at compile time and do get compiled into both the server assembly and the client assembly.

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Bruce Do — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 23:25:20 GMT

i don't understand much about shared code between Server and Client Side. As I know, all code will be compiled to dll as well.

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Dick in London — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 17:20:55 GMT

FYI the intro text "This article is Part 4 of the series WCF RIA Services" should read "This article is Part 5 of the series WCF RIA Services"

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Brian Noyes — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:03:19 GMT

I don't believe RIA Services will support interface-based entity types. It just works with concrete types that are part of your entity model.

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Ray — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:17:59 GMT

How can I add metadata when I don't know what the concrete type will be? I have an interface for my entity and do not know how it will be implemented.

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Anand Subramanian — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:14:19 GMT

You rock

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Minal — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:37:24 GMT

Nice Article

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Aga — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:47:32 GMT

can't wait for your next post:)

RE: WCF RIA Services Part 5 - Metadata and Shared Classes

Veeru — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 13:08:34 GMT

simple and helpful