This article details the basic steps to create a Microsoft Office Lists for Access and Excel.
1. Define your business logic
Define your business logic in a platform independent model. To design this model you can use the CodeFluent Entities Modeler, integrated into Visual Studio 2008 and/or 2010, which lets graphically create entities, define properties, rules, instances, etc. Likewise, since a CodeFluent Entities model is nothing but XML, you can write it yourself a XML Editor such as Visual Studio.
Information on available design concepts is available in the Architect Guide.
In this section you'll find all what you need to design your application using CodeFluent Entities concepts: Entities, Properties, Methods, Rules, Views, Messages, Generating, Built-in Aspects, and so on.
2. Set-up your Visual Studio solution
Once you designed the business logic of your application, but before generating actual code, you need to set-up your Visual Studio solution which you'll use to develop your application.
- If not already, create a project which will hold your CodeFluent Entities Model so it is source controlled and easily accessible to developers.
- Create a project (or folder) which will contain your persistence scripts,
- Create a Class Library project which will contain your Business Object Model,
- Last but not least, create a ASP.NET Web Application which references the class library project.
At this stage you now have the infrastructure of your project.
More information on this step is available in the Microsoft Visual Studio Integration article.
3. Configure your producers
Now that you have Visual Studio projects which will allow you to view, and work with the generated sources, let's actually generate those sources!
This is where the Generating concept comes in: producers translate the platform independent model into actual, functional, code.
Select the producers you need to build your application, which in the case of a rich client application are:
- a persistence producer (e.g. Microsoft SQL Server Producer, Oracle Database Producer),
- the Business Object Model Producer,
- the Microsoft Office Lists Producer.
Configure those producers so:
- the persistence producer generates the persistence scripts into your persistence project, and define a connection string so CodeFluent Entities automatically runs the generated database on your development database.
- the BOM producer generates the C# classes into the class library project so you can easily view, compile, and extend them (in partial classes so your changes don't get overwritten in future generations) if needed,
- the Access and Excel lists producer generates its output (ASMX web service, web site and lists) in the ASP.NET Web Application project.
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Need an example? If using the CodeFluent Builder tool, check-out the Developing Microsoft Office Synchronizable Lists tutorial. |
Once this is done, use the CodeFluent Meta Compiler tool to generate your application!
If you're using the CodeFluent Entities Modeler, all you have to do is right click on your CodeFluent Entities project and click Build.
The builder will mount an in-memory representation of your model and then call each of the defined producers to translate this meta-model.
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Note: This meta-model step is a key feature in CodeFluent Entities, thanks to the CodeFluent API or Patterns, you'll be able to interact on it and apply changes application wide, throughout all layers of your application, such as adding tracking properties, or extra-special-methods to all your entities. See Dynamic Designing, and Built-in Aspects for more information. |
4. Compile
Now that your sources were generated, add the needed references and compile them!
If using the CodeFluent Entities Modeler, references are added automatically, but if using CodeFluent Meta Compiler only, you'll have to do it yourself just like old times!
As you can see, nothing more is needed: generated sources are 100% functional.
5. Configure
Now that all application blocks are ready to be used, you need to configure them so Office clients (Access and Excel) can use them.
Check-out the Editing Data With Excel And Access section to see how it goes: how it works, basic principles as well as configuration info and how to troubleshoot problems.