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LINQ to Zoho CRM 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 Zoho CRM Data Provider.

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

  4. Enter your data source connection information.

    The connector is already registered with Zoho CRM as an OAuth application. As such, OAuth Credentials are embedded by default. If you would prefer to use your own custom OAuth app, see the Custom Credentials section in the Help documentation.

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

ZohoCRMEntities context = new ZohoCRMEntities(); var accountsQuery = from accounts in context.Accounts select accounts; foreach (var result in accountsQuery) { Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.Account_Name); }

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

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