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Use spatial types

Last modified on December 28, 2012 10:45

DevForce provides limited support for EF 5 spatial types.  Spatial types are supported in 2-tier and n-tier .NET 4.5 applications:  they are not supported in Silverlight, Windows Store or Windows Phone applications - platforms where the CLR types in System.Data.Spatial are not defined.  


Overview

Spatial types - DbGeography and DbGeometry - were introduced in Entity Framework 5 and can be used in applications targeting .NET 4.5.

Spatial types can be used in both Code First and EDMX-based models.

Code First model

Let's look at a simple example, based on the EF documentation.

We define a simple Code First entity with a property of DbGeography type:

C#
[ProvideEntityAspect]
public class University {
 public int UniversityID { get; set; }
 public string Name { get; set; }
 public DbGeography Location { get; set; }  
}

The EntityManager looks like this:

C#
public class SpatialTestEntityManager : EntityManager {
 public EntityQuery<University> Universities { get; set; }
}

We can now create and save these entities:

C#
var mgr = new SpatialTestEntityManager();

mgr.AddEntity(new University() {
       Name = "Graphic Design Institute",
       Location = DbGeography.FromText("POINT(-122.336106 47.605049)")
    });

mgr.AddEntity(new University() {
       Name = "School of Fine Art",
       Location = DbGeography.FromText("POINT(-122.335197 47.646711)")
    });

mgr.SaveChanges();

And we can query them:

C#
var myLocation = DbGeography.FromText("POINT(-122.296623 47.640405)");
var university = (from u in mgr.Universities
                  orderby u.Location.Distance(myLocation)
                  select u).FirstOrDefault();
Console.WriteLine("The closest University to you is: {0}.", university.Name);

EDMX-based model

We can also use spatial types in an EDMX-based model.  This sample is also based on EF documentation.

We'll point our EDMX to the database created in our Code First sample above, but you can instead take a Model First approach to create the University entity we saw above.

Note the type of the Location property is Geography:
spatial1.JPG

The generated code for the Location property:

C#
/// <summary>Gets or sets the Location. </summary>
[DataMember]
[Bindable(true, BindingDirection.TwoWay)]
[Editable(true)]
[Display(Name="Location", AutoGenerateField=true)]
public System.Data.Spatial.DbGeography Location {
 get { return PropertyMetadata.Location.GetValue(this); }
 set { PropertyMetadata.Location.SetValue(this, value); }
}

You can query and save these entities as usual.

C#
var mgr = new SpatialTestEntityManager();

mgr.AddEntity(new University() {
       Name = "Graphic Design Institute",
       Location = DbGeography.FromText("POINT(-122.336106 47.605049)")
    });

mgr.AddEntity(new University() {
       Name = "School of Fine Art",
       Location = DbGeography.FromText("POINT(-122.335197 47.646711)")
    });

mgr.SaveChanges();

var myLocation = DbGeography.FromText("POINT(-122.296623 47.640405)");
var university = (from u in mgr.Universities
                  orderby u.Location.Distance(myLocation)
                  select u).FirstOrDefault();
Console.WriteLine("The closest University to you is: {0}.", university.Name);

Troubleshooting

  • To use spatial types in an n-tier application you will need to add the spatial types as known types.  You can easily do this by implementing the IKnownTypeProvider interface:
    C#
    public class SpatialKnwonTypeProvider : IdeaBlade.EntityModel.IKnownTypeProvider {
     public IEnumerable<Type> AddKnownTypes() {
       return new[] { typeof(System.Data.Spatial.DbGeography) };
      }
    }


Tags: Model
Created by DevForce on December 28, 2012 09:32

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