How to create a Model in vb where Table Column names contain spaces?

Question

User2142845853 posted

Have a VB.net webforms app, am setting up the logic for the Gridview.  But in the SQL table all columns have spaces so

Public Class ASTR9
    Public Property Id As Integer             ok
    Public Property Plant Category as String  fail
    Public Property Plant Color as String     fail
    or
    Public Property [Plant Color] as String    fail

In other tables, the names would always have no space at all.  It would be Plant_Category, etc.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUCsHxBEPeg&t=68s  at 1:53 as a good example of whats being done here.  Does it matter that the name in the class isnt a literal match to whats in the SQL table's column name?

Answer 1

User281315223 posted

You can use a ColumnAttribute to decorate your properties with names that corresponding to your database:

Public Class ASTR9
    <Column("Id")>
    Public Property Id As Integer            
    <Column("Plant Category")>
    Public Property PlantCategory as String
    <Column("Plant Color")>
    Public Property PlantColor as String   

Properties cannot have spaces, so this attribute should help with binding the values appropriately if your populating query has spaces. Otherwise, you could just alias or rename your columns entirely (without spaces) to avoid the issue completely.

Answer 2

User475983607 posted

Class properties names cannot contains spaces.  See the VB.NET programming guide for property naming conventions.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/visual-basic/programming-guide/program-structure/naming-conventions

If you are using EF and generating the classes then the code generator will use an underscore to represent space.  There's also the column and table attributes which allow you to map a table column to a property.

<Table("Enrollment")>
Partial Public Class Enrollment
    <Column("Enrollment ID")>
    Public Property EnrollmentID As Integer
End Class

The EF 6 docs cover the details.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/ef/ef6/modeling/code-first/data-annotations

rogersbr

Does it matter that the name in the class isnt a literal match to whats in the SQL table's column name?

Ideally, column names match the property names but it is not required.  Keep in mind, you can also alias the column names to match the property name.

SELECT [Column With a Space] AS ColumnWithASpace
FROM TheTable