Inserting records via OData

Question

Are there any examples on how to directly add data to a Lightswitch application via OData? I've been struggling with a validation error that seems to indicate that I'm missing some required field. How am I supposed to handle the Id field or the RowVersion stuff?

I'm out of ideas about what's causing this. I've manually pieced together every relationship that I need. The only thing I think I'm missing from the OData documentation is calling AddLink(), but I get an error that the entities aren't being tracked.

What else is required?

EDIT: I really just need to do a bulk conversion of the data. I'd accept a solution that allows me to directly put data into the SQL tables, but how do I generate the RowVersion value?

Answer 1

I don't think you'd want to generate a new RowVersion, but pass in the existing one. If you use F12 in your favorite browser to monitor network traffic, you'll see the current RowVersion value of a record is used in the etag when posting an update to a record.

Answer 2

No need to worry about IDs and RowVersions, especially not for an INSERT !

I tried the following from  a .net console app, which has a service reference to the odata service of a LS app.

Following "bric/brac" code is doing exactly what you want:

 class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            ServiceReference2.ApplicationData ctx = new ServiceReference2.ApplicationData(new Uri(@"http://localhost:23286/ApplicationData.svc"));
            var customers = ctx.Customers;
            //ctx.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("test", "test");
            foreach (var item in customers)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(item.LastName);
            }

            //adding a new customer

            Customer c = new Customer { LastName = "customer by command line process", FirstName="FindMeLater" };
            ctx.AddToCustomers(c);
            ctx.SaveChanges();


            Customer existing = ctx.Customers.Where(cc => cc.FirstName == "FindMeLater").First();
            existing.LastName = "now we update again";
            ctx.UpdateObject(existing);
            ctx.SaveChanges();
            Console.Read();
        }
    }

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paul van bladel