Working with Hacker News Data in LINQPad

The CData ADO.NET Provider for Hacker News enables you to use standard ADO.NET interfaces like LINQ and the Entity Framework to work with Hacker News data. This article will demonstrate the process of establishing a connection from LINQPad and executing LINQ queries.

Create the Data Model

After downloading and installing both the provider and LINQPad, create a new class library project within Visual Studio.

See the help documentation for a guide to setting up an EF 6 project to use the provider.

1. Right-click your project and click Add -> New Item -> ADO.NET Entity Data Model. In the resulting dialog, select Code First from database. Click New Connection and specify the connection string options in the resulting wizard.

   Connecting to HackerNews

   The HackerNews API (powered by Firebase) is a public API that requires no authentication. You can connect and query data immediately without any credentials.

   After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

   • AuthScheme: Set this to None.

   Example connection string:

   Profile=C:\profiles\HackerNews.apip;AuthScheme=None
   

   Below is a typical connection string:

   Profile=C:\profiles\HackerNews.apip;AuthScheme=None

   👁 The required connection properties in the Entity Data Model Configuration Wizard. (JSON is shown.)
   

2. Select the desired tables and views and click Finish to create the data model.

   👁 The last step of the Entity Data Model Configuration Wizard, where tables are imported into the entity model.
   
3. Build the project. The generated files can be used to create the Hacker News connection in LINQPad.

Connect to Hacker News Data in LINQPad

After you have obtained the required connection properties and created the data model assembly, follow the steps below to start using the data model in LINQPad.

1. Open LINQPad and click Add Connection.

2. Select the "Use a typed data context from your own assembly" option.

3. Select Entity Framework DbContext.

   👁 The Choose Data Context dialog.
   

4. Click Browse next to the Path to Custom Assembly box and browse to your project folder. Browse to the .dll or .exe under the bin folder.

5. Select the name of the DbContext.
6. If you saved your connection string in App.Config, specify the path to the App.config.

You can now query Hacker News data through LINQPad. For examples of the supported LINQ queries, see the "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation.