Employee Info Starter Kit - Getting Started

Employee Info Starter Kit is an open source ASP.NET project template that is intended to address different types of real world challenges faced by web application developers when performing common CRUD operations. Using a single database table ‘Employee’, it illustrates how to utilize Microsoft ASP.NET 4.0, Entity Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 effectively in that context.

Employee Info Starter Kit is highly influenced by the concept ‘Pareto Principle’ or 80-20 rule. where it is targeted to enable a web developer to gain 80% productivity with 20% of effort with respect to learning curve and production.

Key Technology Areas:

• ASP.NET 4.0
• jQuery 1.5.1
• Entity Framework 4.0
• T-4 Template
• Visual Studio 2010

Install and get started with Employee Info Starter Kit with 3 simple steps as mentioned below:

1. Check Configuration

Before start installing Employee Info Starter Kit, please check you have the following software installed in your system

Visual Studio 2010

Supported editions:

• Visual Studio 2010 Web Developer Express Edition
• Visual Studio 2010 Standard Edition
• Visual Studio 2010 Professional Edition
• Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Edition

Sql Server 2005

Supported versions and editions

• Sql Server 2005 – Express Edition or higher edition
• Sql Server 2008 – Express Edition or higher edition
• Sql Server 2008 R2 – Express Edition or higher edition

2. Install Employee Info Starter Kit

There are different ways you can install Employee Info Starter Kit, as mentioned below:

Download Zip Archive

• Download Employee Info Starter Kit v5.0 release from here.
• Extract and open the “Eisk.Web” folder from the extracted location.
• Click “Eisk.Web.csproj” file to open Employee Info Starter Kit in Visual Studio 2010.

OR Download Visual Studio Extension (VSIX) Package

Instead of installing zip version of Employee Info Starter kit, you can download and install VSIX Package of Employee Info Starter Kit, that will enable to create new projects in Visual Studio 2010 with Employee Info Starter Kit contents as many times as you need. 

• Download VSIX Package of Employee Info Starter Kit v5.0 from here.
• Close Visual Studio 2010, if any instance of Visual Studio is already opened.
• Click on the downloaded package (Eisk.Web.vsix file).
• After clicking on the package, “Visual Studio Extension Installer” window will be opened. Click on the “Install” button to start installing.
• You will see the installation progress for a few and will see a window notifying the completion of installation. Click on the “Close” button to close the installation window.
• Open Visual Studio 2010.
• Go to File –> New –> Project
• Select “Installed Templates” panel from left part of “New Project” dialogue window
• Select “Visual C# -> Web" node from “Installed Templates” panel.
• You will be able to see list of installed templates under this category in the right side of the dialogue window. Find “Employee Info Starter Kit” template from the list of templates shown there and have a double click to create a new project with “Employee Info Starter Kit” content.

3. Install Database

Once you are done with step 2 as mentioned above, you should have Visual Studio 2010 opened with Employee Info Starter Kit web project, as shown below.

Now you need to have the corresponding database installed on your machine. There are two ways that the required database of Employee Info Starter Kit can be installed.

Install Database Automatically

• Press “Ctrl + F5” to run Employee Info Starter Kit
• If you have Sql Server Express Edition installed, Employee Info Starter Kit will attach the “Database.mdf” file located under “App_Data” folder of the project automatically and will be redirected automatically to the employee listing page showing employee data.
• If you don’t have Sql Server Express Edition installed, you will be to see “Install Database” page as shown below.
• Provide database server and credentials in the corresponding fields and click “Test Connection” button.
• Once the connection test is successful, you will be able to see the textbox labeled “Your Database Name” with a default value, which will be the name of database that being installed for Employee Info Starter Kit. Edit it if you want to install the database with your preferred name.
• Click on the “Create Database” button to create database.
• Once the database creation is successful, click the “Install Schema and Test Data” button to start installing database schema and test data in the newly created database.
• Once the schema and data generation is successful, you will be able to see the “Congratulation” message with the link of the employee listing page. Click it to go to the page.

Install and Configure Database Manually

If you have difficulty to install database automatically as mentioned above, you can install database manually using Sql Server Management Studio.

Install Database Manually

• Go to Start Menu
• Write “Sql Server Management Studio” in “Search Programs and Files” textbox and click on the “Sql Server Management Studio” item appeared in the search result
• “Connect to Server” window will be appeared. Select “Database Engine” from “Server type” dropdown. Provide appropriate Server Name, Authentication information to connect with Sql Server. For instance, server name: localhost, authentication: Sql Server Authentication, user name: sa, password: 12345
• Go to “File –> Open –> File” menu.
• It will show “Open File” dialogue to select a sql script to execute. Navigate to project directory, where you have installed Employee Info Starter Kit and select the database creation script in the following location: <project directory>\App_Data\SQL\Database\Create-Database.sql
• Right click on the script and select “Execute” context menu item to execute the script.
• Go to “File –> Open –> File” menu and open the schema creation script from the following location: <project directory>\App_Data\SQL\Schema\Create-Schema.sql
• Select the database (default: EmployeeInfo_SK_5_0) that has been just created from the “Available Databases” dropdown located in the top of Sql Server Management Studio.
• Right click on the script and select “Execute” context menu item to execute the script.
• Go to “File –> Open –> File” menu and open the schema creation script from the following location: <project directory>\App_Data\SQL\Data\Create-Data.sql
• Right click on the script and select “Execute” context menu item to execute the script.

Update Configuration Data

Now that you have installed database manually, you will need to update connection string in project configuration file.

• Go to Visual Studio 2010 Solution Explorer (shortcut key: Ctrl + W,S) while Employee Info Starter Kit is loaded.
• Open the web.config file located under the project root.
• Locate “configuration/connectionStrings” section and change the “DatabaseContext” key with appropriate connection string value.

The resultant connection string for the following sample credentials will look like as provided below ,

• Server name: localhost
• Authentication: Sql Server Authentication
• User name: sa
• Password: 12345
• Database name: EmployeeInfo_SK_5_0

<connectionStrings>

<add name="DatabaseContext" connectionString="metadata=&quot;res://*/Entity Model.DatabaseContext.csdl|

res://*/Entity Model.DatabaseContext.ssdl|res://*/Entity Model.DatabaseContext.msl&quot;

;provider=System.Data.SqlClient;provider connection string=&quot;Data Source=localhost;

Initial Catalog=EmployeeInfo_SK_5_0;Persist Security Info=True;User ID=sa;Password=12345&quot;"

providerName="System.Data.EntityClient" />

</connectionStrings>

Run Employee Info Starter Kit

Now that you have installed database and configured, you are ready to run Employee Info Starter Kit!

• Go to Visual Studio 2010 Solution Explorer (shortcut key: Ctrl + W,S) when Employee Info Starter Kit is loaded.
• Press “Ctrl + F5” to run Employee Info Starter Kit

As soon as you installed Employee Info Starter Kit, you will have some time to explore different features available there. After some time you will probably want to have your hand dirty to do some stuffs on your own! Click here to follow some quick steps that shows how you can build data driven application features within just few minutes.