I know that each time a user registers in my ASP.NET MVC application the ApplicationUser class is used to create the new record and put it in the database.
I was wondering if it's okay to add properties to that class for example I want the model to have a column in the database for DateOfBirth. Then use that class(model) directly in my application when I have to do some business logic things, database queries and similar stuff. Or is it more correct to create a new table in the database called let's say ApplicationAccounts, that saves the general info about the account. Each ApplicationAccount will be associated with a ApplicationUser(1 to 1 relation) and be somewhat of a buffer in the communication with the real accounts. Does that make sense?
I would go with the second option : create your own table, link them up in a one to one relationship using the UserID as a unique foreign key and then go from there.
One note here, it is perfectly normal for the model you need for the views to be different from the database model, this is because your db model can hold a lot of data that your view doesn't actually need. You might want to consider having separate models and use something like Automapper for a quick translation from one to another.
Related
I'm trying to build an Inventory web application with .NET Core. In this app, I want to keep track of every create and update operation, so almost every model in my application has CreatedBy and ModifiedBy fields and each of those fields have a one-to-many relationship with the UserId field from the Users model.
So there are a lot of foreign keys in my models and lots of navigational properties in my Users model. It works but looks kind of messy especially in my Users model so it got me thinking maybe there is something wrong with my approach. I thought of some other ways but I am just learning the ropes so I can't really predict the possible downsides of those approaches, thus, I need help.
So what's the best way to deal with this kind of situation in a web application?
Should I keep defining foreign keys?
Should I store UserId as string in those columns?
Should I create another table which holds records for every create / update operation?
Is there a better way out there?
After some research I decided to go on with temporal tables solution from SQL Server directly. You have to add just a couple of codes to your dbcontext's onmodelcreating method to set it up and it looks like it's working very good for my needs.
I'm using Identity 3 and I want to add some columns in AspNetUser table.
I've tried to do it using EF Core Code first and it's working well but I need to do it DB first.
I was wondering, if I will create the columns manually in database, then create the ApplicationUser class with corresponding properties, will it work?
Yup that should work, I've done it before.
However as time goes on I ended up having to add so many that it got messy.
So eventually I refactored those extra columns into their own related tables:
e.g: User_AdditionalDetails
This was a massive pain as I had live users and had to write scripts to migrate everyone's data etc.
This way you would only need to add a single FK for the related table with all this extra info.
It also neatens the code too, and gives the benefit of being able to load different sets of user properties only when they are needed.
If it's for an application scope property of the user like 'Region' which determines behaviour of core functionality of your app, then I'd say add it straight onto the main ApplicationUser class.
My entire group is new to ASP.Net Core and I was the lucky one tasked with Authentication/Authorization. We have always used a DB first approach, and this is no different, we already have our DB all set up. The higher ups want to use our specific tables for all things Identity, but they also want to leverage the tools that ASP.Net Core gives.
This will be a multi-site app where there is one central database. Our current setup is close to what the scaffolding adds, but has some small differences.
I have read a ton of resources, but the vast majority all focus on the code first approach and I currently don't fully understand what I need and what is there for the code first approach. I have seen a couple of answers that recommend using the .ToTable and .Property inside of OnModelCreate. Is this the best option or am I better off creating my own stores and methods? I currently have a user model created and a store to go with it (based on this site). Is it best for me to try to expand that all the way out (don't full understand how to have it pull in roles and claims).
This is what our DB Schema currently looks like.
At this point we are creating our Roles and Claims via a db script. The only thing we will be using UI's for right now is a page that will let a site admin add users, and assign them roles, and any singular claims they need.
Any help or input would be greatly appreciated as I try to wrap my head around all of this. If I have left out any pertinent information please let me know. As I said with what I have now I can create a user and login, I just have no idea where to go from here (how to add roles and claims).
Here's how I think about it and the steps I would take to approach in solving this problem.
So Microsoft's implementation of Identity is an abstraction of the problem.
The Models that they provide and the Tables that are derived from them is their choice for the default implementation of the abstraction.
So essentially what you want to do is to plug in your models in to this abstraction.
To quickly generate these models from your database you might want to use scaffolding this will generate the DbContext and the Models, you will then have to configure the dbcontext to plug in your design.
And if you look at how you can create your own Identity Tables providing your own objects
here this can give you an idea of how to plug in your models/functions in to this abstraction.
You will most likely have to override the OnModelCreating method to configure the relationship of your tables.
Ihave a DB First EF5 project that I am implementing SimpleMembership in. I have most of it working, but a question has come up.
The main User table created by Simple Membership has the UserName in it. I have a couple other places in the app where I need to query this table, specifically the userName. Simple Membership does not use the Data.EntityClient in the connection string, so i have it set to the SqlClient.
So because i don't have an entity model with the provider User table, I am not sure how to query it. Usually i would create an instance of the entity model and use LINQ on it, but when I try it I get a very long winded error about mixing code first with entity first. I have modified the 'initialSimpleMembershipAttribute' so it points to the separate connection string I made for the Membership tables.
One solution i thought of was to save the user, then copy the username to one of my custom tables, then i can query it through EF, but this seems like it would violate some kind database 'best practice' of duplicated data.
Another idea I had is to create a second edmx model for the tables that Membership created, but if SimpleMembership does not use the EntityClient, does that also mean it will not recognize a entity model?
You're way over complicating things.
If you have your own model, then you can just get rid of the model that the default template gives you, and use yours instead. It doesn't matter if it's Code first or database first or whatever. Just change the Initialize SimpleMembershipAttribute to remove the references to the default model they give you, and make sure you modify the InitializeDatabaseConnection call correctly.
WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseConnection("YourConnection", "WhateverYouCallYourUserTable",
"WhateverYourUserIdIs", "WhateverYourUserNameColumnIs", autoCreateTables: true);
I want to build an online form builder much like wufoo that allows the users to create and publish their own web forms. Each submission should be saved to a data base where the user can later retrieve the submissions.
As these forms will be dynamic, ie. the user has complete control over the amount and type of form fields I am trying to think of a solid database design to store this information.
I would have one table fieldtype which contains every type of field available to the users, ie. textfield, emailfield etc.
One baseform table which will hold each forms id, url etc.
I would then have a table formfields which would contain ref to the baseform and to fieldtype, this table could also include custom validation to be done on each field.
Is this design good as a base structure? I imagine it will be easy to add new types of fields to the application however I don't know what the potential downsides are as I am far from a sql expert.
store user defined data in SQL
I think you are looking for the Entity–attribute–value database model in which:
The basic idea is to store attributes, and their corresponding values,
as rows in a single table.
Typically the table has at least three columns: entity, attribute, and
value. Though if there is only a single relevant entity, e.g. a table
for application configuration or option settings, the entity column
can be excluded.
See this pages as a start:
Using Database Metadata and its Semantics to Generate Automatic and Dynamic Web Entry Forms (pdf)
Planning and Implementing a Metadata-Driven Digital Repository (pdf)
I retagged your question with entity-attribute-value tag, in which you can browse a lot of threads that relate to your case.
As Mahmoud Gamal writes, The model you describe is "Entity/Attribute/Value"; as Borys writes, there are many known problems with this model.
As an alternative, you might consider storing the form entries in a "document" - e.g. XML or JSON - within a relational model.
For instance, you might have a table along the lines of:
FORM_SUBMISSION
--------------------
Submission_ID (pk)
Client_ID (fk to clients table)
Submission_date
SubmissionDocument
I'm using "client" to represent the users who create the form; to retrieve all submissions for a given client, you use a where clause on client_id.
This model makes it harder to run SQL queries against the form submission (though that becomes hard with EAV too when going beyond very simple queries), but it dramatically simplifies the persistence solution.