Working with Stack Exchange Data in LINQPad

The CData ADO.NET Provider for Stack Exchange enables you to use standard ADO.NET interfaces like LINQ and the Entity Framework to work with Stack Exchange data. This article will demonstrate the process of establishing a connection from LINQPad and executing LINQ queries.

Create the Data Model

After downloading and installing both the provider and LINQPad, create a new class library project within Visual Studio.

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

1. Right-click your project and click Add -> New Item -> ADO.NET Entity Data Model. In the resulting dialog, select Code First from database. Click New Connection and specify the connection string options in the resulting wizard.

   Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Stack Exchange Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\StackExchange.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Stack Exchange (see below).

   Stack Exchange API Profile Settings

   Register an application on StackApps to obtain an API Key. The Site property specifies which Stack Exchange site to query (e.g., stackoverflow).

   Below is a typical connection string:

   Profile=C:\profiles\StackExchange.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key;Site=stackoverflow';

   

2. Select the desired tables and views and click Finish to create the data model.

   
3. Build the project. The generated files can be used to create the Stack Exchange connection in LINQPad.

Connect to Stack Exchange Data in LINQPad

After you have obtained the required connection properties and created the data model assembly, follow the steps below to start using the data model in LINQPad.

1. Open LINQPad and click Add Connection.

2. Select the "Use a typed data context from your own assembly" option.

3. Select Entity Framework DbContext.

   

4. Click Browse next to the Path to Custom Assembly box and browse to your project folder. Browse to the .dll or .exe under the bin folder.

5. Select the name of the DbContext.
6. If you saved your connection string in App.Config, specify the path to the App.config.

You can now query Stack Exchange data through LINQPad. For examples of the supported LINQ queries, see the "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation.