Question

What I know about web development I can count on one hand. In an effort to change that I have begun to look at asp.net web pages as this technology seems to have a low technical barrier to entry and sits nicely, in my view, above plain ‘ol HTML.

I have been working through some samples and something has caught my eye. To create a connection and query a database you simply have to do this:

@{
  var database = Database.Open("deanvmc");
  var sqlQuery = "SELECT * FROM Articles";
  var data = database.Query(sqlQuery);
}

From that I seem to be able to access the row data from the returned table in the following fashion:

@foreach(var row in data)
{
    <article>
        <h3>@row.Heading</h3>
        <nav>
            <ul>
                <li>@row.DatePosted</li>
                <li>@row.Category</li>
                <li>0 Comments</li>
            </ul>
        </nav>
        <p>@row.SubHeading</p>
    </article>
}

Is this an ORM at work? Is it correct to assume that the object contained in row will always be mapped to the columns returned from the sqlQuery?

Also, is this a function of webmatrix as a stack or asp.net web pages as a library? I am a little confused about where one ends and the other begins.

Answer 1

The code above does not use an ORM – it is simply mapping fields returned from the database view to the row object returned by your query. So your assumption is correct – all of the object properties are mapped to the columns returned from the query.

WebMatrix itself is just a web development tool – it provides the editor, templates, and other dev tool type things. The libraries you’re using (ASP.NET Web Pages with Razor & C#) are the stack on top of which your application is built. WebMatrix happens to also support non .NET technologies such as PHP, and may support more in the future.

I know this was kind of open ended, but hopefully I was some help. Happy Coding!