LINQ to Basecamp Data



LINQ offers versatile querying capabilities within the .NET Framework (v3.0+), offering a straightforward method for programmatic data access through CData ADO.NET Data Providers. In this article, we demonstrate the use of LINQ to retrieve information from the Basecamp Data Provider.

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the Basecamp via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for Basecamp. To achieve this, we will use LINQ to Entity Framework, which facilitates the generation of connections and can be seamlessly employed with any CData ADO.NET Data Providers to access data through LINQ.

See the help documentation for a guide to setting up an EF 6 project to use the provider.

  1. In a new project in Visual Studio, right-click on the project and choose to add a new item. Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model.
  2. Choose EF Designer from Database and click Next.
  3. Add a new Data Connection, and change your data source type to "CData Basecamp Data Source".
  4. Enter your data source connection information.

    Basecamp uses basic or OAuth 2.0 authentication. To use basic authentication you will need the user and password that you use for logging in to Basecamp. To authenticate to Basecamp via OAuth 2.0, you will need to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties by registering an app with Basecamp.

    See the Getting Started section in the help documentation for a connection guide.

    Additionally, you will need to specify the AccountId connection property. This can be copied from the URL after you log in.

    Below is a typical connection string:

    [email protected];Password=test123;
  5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting BasecampEntities as our entity connection in App.Config.
  6. Enter a model name and select any tables or views you would like to include in the model.

Using the entity you created, you can now perform select , update, delete, and insert commands. For example:

BasecampEntities context = new BasecampEntities(); var projectsQuery = from projects in context.Projects select projects; foreach (var result in projectsQuery) { Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.Name); }

See "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation for example queries of the supported LINQ.

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