Question

I’m trying to follow the Contoso University tutorial, only with SQL Server 2008 instead of CE. I can connect to the database engine in SQL Server Management Studio using my PC’s name and windows authentication. I haven’t created a database with it because I’m trying to use EF Code First.

This is my connection string:

<add 
      name="SchoolContext" 
      connectionString="Data Source=CARSON-PC\CARSON;Integrated Security=true" 
      providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>

I try to add a controller by right-clicking the controllers folder and selecting Add->Controller... and setting up the resulting dialog according to the tutorial. I wind up with a dialog telling me a FileNotFoundException was thrown, and the file is a temporary dll:

This dialog is thrown up five times (once for each of the generated template files, I assume) and I wind up with a controller but no generated templates.

I suspect it’s to do with either my connection string or my SQL server installation, since I’ve been stuck on this a while, getting various errors at this stage as I try and get the connection string right.

For completeness, here’s the model I’m trying to generate a controller for:

public class Student {
    public int StudentID { get; set; }
    public string LastName { get; set; }
    public string FirstMidName { get; set; }
    public DateTime EnrollmentDate { get; set; }
    public virtual ICollection<Enrollment> Enrollments { get; set; }
}

And the context:

public class SchoolContext : DbContext {
    public DbSet<Student> Students { get; set; }
    public DbSet<Enrollment> Enrollments { get; set; }
    public DbSet<Course> Courses { get; set; }

    protected override void OnModelCreating(modelBuilder As DbModelBuilder) {
        modelBuilder.Conventions.Remove<PluralizingTableNameConvention>();
    }
}

Is my connection string wrong? Is this a symptom of something not configured right with the server? What am I screwing up here?

Answer 1

This turned out to be a simple bug in the MVC template files List.tt, Edit.tt, Details.tt, etc. There was an ambiguous reference to ColumnAttribute.

I opened C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\ItemTemplates\CSharp\Web\MVC 4\CodeTemplates\AddView\CSHTML, and going through each of the .tt files and searching for ” ColumnAttribute” (with the space at the beginning):

//...
var column = attribute as ColumnAttribute;
if (column != null && column.IsPrimaryKey) {  // LINQ to SQL
    return true;
}
//...

I changed that first line to:

var column = attribute as System.Data.Linq.Mapping.ColumnAttribute;

I think only Empty.tt didn’t have it. I did the same for the VB templates. Now the controllers are created fine.