This article is about saving data entered by the user through a form into a database connection by using linq to sql.
First we'll create a table called ContactTbl database contains 8 columns: contactId (int, pk), firstName (nvarchar), lastName (nvarchar), country (nvarchar), city (nvarchar), street (nvarchar), email (nvarchar), comments (nvarchar) and dateArrived (DateTime). The contactTbl should look like that:
The next step is to create LINQ TO SQL DataClass and to drag and drop the contactTbl into it. Now, when the database is configured and ready to receive data, we opened a new aspx page with additional external page coding behind. We use C # so the code behaind page will name default.aspx.cs.
Drag and drop TextBox controllers to the div section from the left toolbox menu using design mode and supply to each TextBox ID property the same name you were used the contactTbl columns.
The contact form design mode view:
The contact form code view:
<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="_Default" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head runat="server">
<title></title>
<style type="text/css">
.style1
{
width: 392px;
height: 265px;
}
.style2
{
}
.style3
{
width: 153px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<table class="style1" dir="ltr">
<tr>
<td class="style3"
style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small">
First name:</td>
<td>
<asp:TextBox ID="firstName" runat="server" Width="245px"></asp:TextBox>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="style3"
style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small">
Last name:</td>
<td>
<asp:TextBox ID="lastName" runat="server" Width="245px"></asp:TextBox>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="style3"
style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small">
Country:</td>
<td>
<asp:TextBox ID="country" runat="server" Width="245px"></asp:TextBox>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="style3"
style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small">
City:</td>
<td>
<asp:TextBox ID="city" runat="server" Width="245px"></asp:TextBox>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="style3"
style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small">
Address:</td>
<td>
<asp:TextBox ID="address" runat="server" Width="245px"></asp:TextBox>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="style3"
style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small">
Email:</td>
<td>
<asp:TextBox ID="email" runat="server" Width="245px"></asp:TextBox>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="style3"
style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small">
Comments:</td>
<td>
<asp:TextBox ID="comments" runat="server" Height="91px" TextMode="MultiLine"
Width="245px"></asp:TextBox>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right" class="style2" colspan="2">
<asp:Button ID="sendBtn" OnClick="sendBtn_Click" runat="server" Text="Send" Width="86px" />
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>
Don’t forget to configure the buttons’ OnClick event:
<asp:Button ID="sendBtn" OnClick="sendBtn_Click" runat="server" Text="Send" Width="86px" />
All those who like challenges, try to use cascading drop-down list instead of text boxes as we learned in the previous article “Cascading Drop Down List using ASP.NET and C# + LINQ TO SQL”.
You can also verify the information the user enters using validation tool from the toolbox menu. Here are some options for validation testing an empty text box, and a valid email address.
<asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="RequiredFieldValidator1" runat="server"By default the ValidationSummary control display the error messages in list but you can choose displaying the errors using message box by changing the ShowSummary value to false and the ShowMessageBox to true.
ErrorMessage="first name is required" ControlToValidate="firstName"></asp:RequiredFieldValidator>
<br />
<asp:RegularExpressionValidator ID="RegularExpressionValidator1" runat="server"
ErrorMessage="Please provide a valid email address" ControlToValidate="email"
ValidationExpression="\w+([-+.']\w+)*@\w+([-.]\w+)*\.\w+([-.]\w+)*"></asp:RegularExpressionValidator>
<asp:ValidationSummary ID="ValidationSummary1" runat="server" />
The only thing left is to write the code handler sending data to the database. First we need to create a function that handle the buttons’ OnClick event:
protected void sendBtn_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
}
The next step is to create a name for the database using DataContext:
DataClassesDataContext db = new DataClassesDataContext();
Then create new instance of the contactTbl DataClass (the “addNewContact” is a unique name iv’e selected, it can be any name you’ll like):
contactTbl addNewContact = new contactTbl();
Then, start define the value for each column in the contactTbl dataclass:
addNewContact.firstName = firstName.Text;
addNewContact.lastName = lastName.Text;
addNewContact.country = country.Text;
addNewContact.city = city.Text;
addNewContact.street = street.Text;
addNewContact.email = email.Text;
addNewContact.comments = comments.Text;
addNewContact.dateArrived = DateTime.Now;
Because we’re created DataClass and “Diagramed” the database, The contactTbl know the columns names, so after you’ll click the dot (.) sign right after the “addNewContact” dataclass, you will be able to select which column to deal with. In all cases we are getting the values from a textboxes (firstName.Text) except the dateArrived column which describes the date and time we received the request from the user by using the DateTime.Now method.
Finally we need to insert the new data into our contactTbl table and to update the changes.
db.contactTbls.InsertOnSubmit(addNewContact);
db.SubmitChanges();
At the first line we are calling the database name we’ve created (.) the name of the updating table (.) and then using the InsertOnSubmit method which store all the data we kept in the addNewContact new dataclass. Finally, we submit the changes we’re making on the database.
The Final step is to response the user about the results of the submitting. There is a few ways to modify that by response.redirect to the same page or to a new page - Site administrators often prefer to redirect a user to a new page and thus implement tracking feature requests through Google Analytics, etc. You can also return a message through a Label control and to clear the TextBoxes controls using the String.Empty command.
firstName.Text = String.Empty;
The full aspx.cs code:
public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page
{
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
}
protected void sendBtn_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
DataClassesDataContext db = new DataClassesDataContext();
contactTbl addNewContact = new contactTbl();
addNewContact.firstName = firstName.Text;
addNewContact.lastName = lastName.Text;
addNewContact.country = country.Text;
addNewContact.city = city.Text;
addNewContact.street = street.Text;
addNewContact.email = email.Text;
addNewContact.comments = comments.Text;
addNewContact.dateArrived = DateTime.Now;
db.contactTbls.InsertOnSubmit(addNewContact);
db.SubmitChanges();
Response.Redirect("contactSent.aspx");
}
}
