LINQ to TimeCamp Data

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the TimeCamp via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for TimeCamp. 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 TimeCamp Data Source".

4. Enter your data source connection information.

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

   TimeCamp API Profile Settings

   TimeCamp uses token-based authentication. To obtain an API Token:

   1. Log in to your TimeCamp account at https://app.timecamp.com
   2. Click your profile avatar in the top-right corner
   3. Select Profile Settings
   4. Copy the API token shown at the bottom of the page

   After obtaining your API Token, set the following connection properties:

   • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.

   Set the following in the ProfileSettings connection property:

   • APIKey: Set this to your TimeCamp API token.

   Below is a typical connection string:

   Profile=C:\profiles\TimeCamp.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_token';


5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting APIEntities 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 commands. For example:

APIEntities context = new APIEntities();

var groupusersQuery = from groupusers in context.GroupUsers
  select groupusers;

foreach (var result in groupusersQuery) {
  Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.UserId);
}

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