Monocle - a simple ORM

Monocle is a very simple Object-relational mapper. It is intended to be used against an SQL Server database - other databases are not supported.

Uses the HyperTypeDescriptor component written by Marc Gravell and described here: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/18450/HyperDescriptor-Accelerated-dynamic-property-acces

Usage

Getting started

Call the Initialize method to let Monocle know about your database:

MonocleDb.Initialize(string connectionString);

Database requirements

If you want Insert/Update/Delete functionality for free, your database tables need to have an Id column of type uniqueidentifier.

Persistable

Inherit from Persistable when you want to be able to Insert, Update or Delete an instance of your class (a row in your table) out-of-the-box. You also need to have a column called Id of type uniqueidentifier in the corresponding table.

Optionally, include a [Table] attribute at the top of your class declaration.

The Table attribute

The Table attribute has the following properties:

• TableName - the name of the table in the database. If left empty, use the same name as your class.
• AutoMap (default false) - If true, implicitly maps properties (useful for DTOs).

If Monocle doesn't find a [Table] attribute above your class, it will use a table with the same name as your class in the database, and require any properties you want mapped to your table to be explicitly defined with a [Column] attribute.

public class MyMappedClass : Persistable
{
    [Column]
    public string Name { get; set; }

	[Column]
	public DateTime CreatedDate { get; set; }
}

To save an instance of your object to the database, call the Save()-method on the instance.

var myMappedClass = new MyMappedClass
					{
						Name = "Hi, Github!",
						CreatedDate = DateTime.Now
					};

myMappedClass.Save();

To delete the object, call Delete(). You can override these methods to implement your own logic to supplement or replace the Persistable.Save() / Delete() methods.

ViewObject

Inherit from ViewObject when you want to map a table to a view. You must include [Column] attributes. You can override the Save() and Delete() methods as necessary to implement persistance logic.

[Table]
public class MyViewObject : ViewObject
{
    [Column]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    public override void Save()
    {
        // Save logic here.
    }
}

MonocleDb

Call methods in the static MonocleDb class when you want to perform an action on the current database. All methods take in either a stored procedure or a text command. You do not need to specify which is which.

MonocleDb.Execute("MyJob");

Will execute the procedure MyJob.

Monocle can transform a database result to an object using the following method:

var myPerson = MonocleDb.Execute<Person>("select top 1 * from Person");

If you want to send in parameters, you can use an anonymous object initializer:

var myPerson = MonocleDb.Execute<Person>("select top 1 * from Person where id = @Id", new { Id = personId });

If you want to select something by its Id, you can use:

var myPerson = MonocleDb.FindById<Person>(personId);

To fetch all records of something, use:

var myPeople = MonocleDb.List<Person>();

Or to use a selector:

var myPeople = MonocleDb.ExecuteList<Person>("select top 100 * from Person where name = @name", new { name = "Christian" });