This is a quick walk through of how to setup a database, create some model objects, and build a scaffold for CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) all using ASP.NET MVC 3 and Visual Studio 2010.

Open Visual Studio 2010 and start a database project as shown.

Next create an ASP.NET MVC 3 Web Application in this solution.

Now open the Server Explorer in Visual Studio 2010 (You might have to click on View to find it if it isn’t already available in the main IDE). Right click on the Data Connections node in the Service Explorer Tree. Select Create Database and provide a name for the database.

Next in the Server Explorer, right click on the newly created database and select New Query. Then in the query window paste this SQL create script in and run it by right clicking and selecting execute.

[sourcecode languag=”sql”]
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Widgetz] (
[Id] UNIQUEIDENTIFIER NOT NULL,
[Name] NVARCHAR (50) NOT NULL,
[Description] NTEXT NULL,
[Created] DATETIME NOT NULL,
[Terminated] DATETIME NULL,
[Addon] BIT NOT NULL,
[Active] BIT NOT NULL,
[Cost] MONEY NULL,
[ChildWidgetz] INT NULL
);

ALTER TABLE [dbo].[Widgetz]
ADD CONSTRAINT [PK_Widgetz] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([Name] ASC) WITH (ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, PAD_INDEX = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF);

ALTER TABLE [dbo].[Widgetz]
ADD CONSTRAINT [DF_Widgetz_Created] DEFAULT (getdate()) FOR [Created];

ALTER TABLE [dbo].[Widgetz]
ADD CONSTRAINT [DF_Widgetz_Active] DEFAULT ((1)) FOR [Active];

ALTER TABLE [dbo].[Widgetz]
ADD CONSTRAINT [DF_Widgetz_Addon] DEFAULT ((0)) FOR [Addon];
[/sourcecode]

Once the table is created bring to focus the Solution Explorer and right click on the Database Project, selecting the Import Database Objects and Settings.

Next select the correct database connection, and leave everything else as it is set.

Next the wizard will finish importing the database objects.

If you look through the folder tree of the project you’ll find individual files for the table, defaults, and other object settings.

Now right click on the Models directory of the ASP.NET MVC 3 Project that was created earlier. Select add and then new item. In that dialog add a new ADO.NET Entity Data Model.

A dialog will appear, select the option to Generate from database and click next.

Next select the correct database connection again, then click on Yes to save the sensitive data (which if you’re using windows authentication it isn’t really going to save anything dangerous). Make sure the entities are named appropriately and click Next.

The next screen, which may take a moment or two to display the list of tables and objects, will appear. Select the table that has been created and click on

Once done and finish is clicked, the entity model file will show the display view of the entity that was just created.

Now right click on the controller folder and select to create a new controller.

Be sure to click the advanced options and select the layout page.

Now click on Ok and then Add. Visual Studio 2010 will not generate the scaffolding for the controller and views around CRUD operations.

This might seem like an absurdly easy thing to do, and you’d be right. There are however many steps to turn this into a feasible, well design user interface, and provide a solid and intelligent user experience (UX) to the end user. Also, this is arguably a not so maintainable bit of work. If the end user ONLY wants to operate on the data with CRUD, then this is great. But the minute something else is needed a very different, testable, and maintainable architecture should be utilized instead of this generated scaffolding. Which in coming blog entries I will be covering some of the ways to create testable, maintainable, and better designed architecture around more than CRUD.  🙂

CODE: All the code for this project is available in the Lesson 1 – ScaffoldGeneratedWidgetz.