(Another) ASP.NET MVC 2.0 app with MongoDb Part 1

I have been fiddling around with Db4o and well.. I did not finish my app. Which probably means that it is time to try out yet another document based database. So. Let's cover MongoDb this time.

I will now create a webapplication where users can submit bugs for a certain software project. Let's call it BugBase.

The first step is to create the folders c:\data and c:\data\db. These are the default folders that you can override if you wish. The next step is to download the Mongo binaries and extract them in c:\data\db.

As with many nosql databases they're obscenely trivial to install. Click on mongod.exe in the bin folder and the Mongo server is running:

Let's see if this works. Let's create a bug record for "unable to save" in a database.

C:\data\db\bin>mongo
MongoDB shell version: 1.4.2
url: test
connecting to: test
type "exit" to exit
type "help" for help
> b = { description : "unable to save" };
{ "description" : "unable to save" }
> b = { bugtext : "unable to save the records"};
{ "bugtext" : "unable to save the records" }
> db.bugbase.save(b);
> db.bugbase.find();
{ "_id" : ObjectId("4c03a7fa0e6c000000004226"), "bugtext" : "unable to save the
records" }
>

Apparently it does work 😉
I inserted a record in a document (ie table) and Mongo created a unique identifier for me. Cool.

Put Mongo in an ASP.NET MVC 2 app

First step is to create an MVC2 app in Visual Studio 2010 and get rid of all the standard stuff from the template.

Did somebody actually write a MongoDb to Linq provider? But yes of course! My hero Rob Conery did. And Andrew Theken took it further and hosts the project on Github.

What a surprise, only yesterday Andrew uploaded a new version. Wherever would I be without the efforts of these brilliant people? Download the latest Norm project (should I use Github) and compile it in Visual Studio. Grab the norm.dll from the bin folder and add a reference to it in the BugBase project.

Next I need an example as of how to use this dll. At Codeplex Shiju Varghese wrote an example application, which I will use as a reference. But you don't need to check out all these examples. It's just to give the credits to the people that made all this possible.

For BugBase we need at least 2 classes. Bug and User. Create them in the Models folder.

 public class User
    {
        [MongoIdentifier]
        public ObjectId Id { get; set; }
        public string Email { get; set; }
        public string Password { get; set; }
        public List Bugs { get; set; }

        public User() {
            Bugs = new List();
        }
    }

public class Bug
    {
        [MongoIdentifier]
        public ObjectId Id { get; set; }
        public string ShortDescription { get; set; }
        public string LongDescription { get; set; }
        public DateTime? Date { get; set; }
        public bool Status { get; set; }
        public User User { get; set; } 
    }

Now, let's add a folder called Infrastructure to put all the data layer stuff in. Create a new class called MongoSession.cs.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using Norm;
using Norm.Collections;
using Norm.Linq;
using Norm.Responses;
using BugBase.Models;

namespace BugBase.Infrastructure
{
    internal class MongoSession : IDisposable
    {
        private readonly MongoQueryProvider provider;

        public MongoSession()
        {
            var mongo = new Mongo("BugBase", "localhost", "27017", "");
            this.provider = new MongoQueryProvider(mongo);
        }

        public IQueryable Bugs
        {
            get { return new MongoQuery(this.provider); }
        }
        public IQueryable users
        {
            get { return new MongoQuery(this.provider); }
        }
        public MongoQueryProvider Provider
        {
            get { return this.provider; }
        }

        public void Add(T item) where T : class, new()
        {
            this.provider.DB.GetCollection().Insert(item);
        }

        public void Dispose()
        {
            this.provider.Server.Dispose(); 
        }
        public void Delete(T item) where T : class, new()
        {
            this.provider.DB.GetCollection().Delete(item);
        }

        public void Drop()
        {
            this.provider.DB.DropCollection(typeof(T).Name);
        }

        public void Save(T item) where T : class,new()
        {
            this.provider.DB.GetCollection().Save(item);            
        }
    }    
  }

We've got the models in place and the datalayer, so let's create a UserController.

Let's create a view.

Create a strongly typed view with the BugBase.Models.User View Data Class and Create as View Content.

Now let's add the controllermethods to create a user and list them:

 public ActionResult Index()
        {
            using (var session = new MongoSession())
            {
                var userlist = session.users.AsEnumerable();
                return View(userlist);
            }
        }

 [HttpPost]
        public ActionResult Create(User user)
        {
            using (var session = new MongoSession())
            {
                session.Save(user);
            }
            return new RedirectResult("/User");
        }

Compile the project and behold the result:

And the list: (OK, never mind the poor security of this app)

Next time let's implement the bugs. You can download the very beta beta beta BugBase App here.