Generate entity class from database table

Question

I need to build a class in this form

namespace BestCompanyEver
{
    public class PersonInfo
    {
     public string Name{get;set;}
     public int Age{get;set;}
    }
}

From a table Person that has columns Name and Age.

Are there any ready to use solutions for this?

I know I can implement this with T4 or Codesmith, but there should be somebody who already did it.

Answer 1

What about Entity Framework?

Answer 2

Or LINQ to SQL, or LLBLGen Pro

Answer 3

Or Subsonic, or NHibernate...

Answer 4

I found some nice T4 template I could use. Its from a project on codeplex.

LINQ to SQL templates for T4

The template is hard to read an it took me a while to simplify it. Before you can use it you have to download an include (CSharpDataClasses.tt ) from the project.

Here is my template ():

  <# // L2ST4 - LINQ to SQL templates for T4 v0.82 - http://www.codeplex.com/l2st4
  // Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.
  // This source code is made available under the terms of the Microsoft Public License (MS-PL)
  #><#@ template language="C#v3.5" hostspecific="True"
  #><#@ include file="L2ST4.ttinclude"
  #><#@ output extension=".generated.cs"
  #><# // Set options here
  var options = new {
   DbmlFileName = Host.TemplateFile.Replace(".tt",".dbml"), // Which DBML file to operate on (same filename as template)
   SerializeDataContractSP1 = false, // Emit SP1 DataContract serializer attributes
   FilePerEntity = true, // Put each class into a separate file
   StoredProcedureConcurrency = false, // Table updates via an SP require @@rowcount to be returned to enable concurrency
   EntityFilePath = Path.GetDirectoryName(Host.TemplateFile) // Where to put the files 
  };
  var code = new CSharpCodeLanguage();
  var data = new Data(options.DbmlFileName);
  var manager = new Manager(Host, GenerationEnvironment, true) { OutputPath = options.EntityFilePath };
  data.ContextNamespace = (new string[] { manager.GetCustomToolNamespace(data.DbmlFileName), data.SpecifiedContextNamespace, manager.DefaultProjectNamespace }).FirstOrDefault(s => !String.IsNullOrEmpty(s));
  data.EntityNamespace = (new string[] { manager.GetCustomToolNamespace(data.DbmlFileName), data.SpecifiedEntityNamespace, manager.DefaultProjectNamespace }).FirstOrDefault(s => !String.IsNullOrEmpty(s));
  manager.StartHeader();

  manager.EndHeader();
  var tableOperations = new List<TableOperation>();
   foreach(var table in data.Tables)
    tableOperations.AddRange(table.Operations);
   foreach(Table table in data.Tables)
    foreach(OperationType operationType in Enum.GetValues(typeof(OperationType)))
     if (!tableOperations.Any(o => (o.Table == table) && (o.Type == operationType))) {}
  if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(data.ContextNamespace)) {}
  foreach(Table table in data.Tables) {
   foreach(TableClass class1 in table.Classes) {
    manager.StartBlock(Path.ChangeExtension(class1.Name + "Info" ,".cs"));
    if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(data.EntityNamespace)) {#>
  using System;
  using System.Collections.Generic;
  using System.Linq;
  using System.Text;
  namespace <#=data.EntityNamespace#>
  { 
  <#  }

  #> <#=code.Format(class1.TypeAttributes)#> class <#=class1.Name#>Info
   {

  <#  int dataMemberIndex = 1;
    if (class1.Columns.Count > 0) {
  #><#   foreach(Column column in class1.Columns) {#>
    private <#=code.Format(column.StorageType)#> <#= "_" + char.ToLower(column.Member[0]) +  column.Member.Substring(1) #><# if (column.IsReadOnly) {#> = default(<#=code.Format(column.StorageType)#>)<#}#>;

    <#=code.Format(column.MemberAttributes)#><#=code.Format(column.Type)#> <#=column.Member#>
    {
     get { return <#= "_" + char.ToLower(column.Member[0]) +  column.Member.Substring(1) #>; }
     set {<#= "_" + char.ToLower(column.Member[0]) +  column.Member.Substring(1) #> = value;}
    }

  <#   }
    }
  #>
   }
  }
  <#  
    manager.EndBlock();
   }
  }
  manager.StartFooter();
  manager.EndFooter(); 
  manager.Process(options.FilePerEntity);#>

Answer 5

Take a look at the SFS project: http://www.codeplex.com/sfs