Build MVC Applications with Connectivity to Amazon S3 Data

This article shows how to use wizards in Visual Studio to drop the CData ADO.NET Provider for Amazon S3 into a simple MVC (model, view, controller) project.

Create the Entity Framework Model

Follow the steps below to save connection properties and map tables to entities in the data model.

1. Create a new MVC project in Visual Studio. In this example, the project name is MvcAmazonS3App.

2. If you are using Entity Framework 6, you will need to take the preliminary step of registering the Amazon S3 Entity Framework provider for your project. See the "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation for a guide.

   Note that MVC 3 scaffolding and MVC 4 scaffolding do not support Entity Framework 6. You can use your scaffolding with Entity Framework 6 by upgrading to the latest version of MVC.

3. To add the .edmx file from the designer, right-click your Models folder and click Add New Item. Select ADO.NET Entity Data Model, name the model, and click Add. In this example, the name of the model is AmazonS3Model.
4. In the Entity Data Model wizard, select the option 'EF Designer from database'. The Entity Data Model wizard is displayed.
5. Click New Connection. Select CData Amazon S3 Data Source in the dialog that is displayed.

6. Specify the required connection string properties.

   To authorize Amazon S3 requests, provide the credentials for an administrator account or for an IAM user with custom permissions. Set AccessKey to the access key Id. Set SecretKey to the secret access key.

   Note: You can connect as the AWS account administrator, but it is recommended to use IAM user credentials to access AWS services.

   For information on obtaining the credentials and other authentication methods, refer to the Getting Started section of the Help documentation.

   A typical connection string is below:

   AccessKey=a123;SecretKey=s123;

7. Name the connection and select whether to include sensitive information, such as connection credentials, in the connection string. For simplicity, this example saves sensitive information in Web.config. The connection settings are saved as AmazonS3Entities.

8. Select the views you need. In this example, ObjectsACL is imported. Also, the option to pluralize object names is deselected in this example. Click Finish to create the .edmx file.
9. Build your project to complete this step.

Scaffold the Controller and Views

After creating the model and building the project, you can use ASP.NET Scaffolding wizards to create the controller and the views.

1. In Solution Explorer, right-click the controllers folder and click Add -> Controller. Select MVC 5 Controller with views, using Entity Framework.
2. In the Add Controller dialog that is then displayed, select the following options:
   • Model class: Select a table you imported; for example, ObjectsACL.
   • Data context class: Select your context class.
3. Leave the default values for the other fields.