I’m starting this post with a disclaimer. I’m not a RavenDb expect, actually far from it, in fact I’ve only started working with it this evening!

I’m working on a pet project and getting the initial building blocks in place. I read about RavenDB in a recent edition of CODE magazine. The same magazine dealt with some other NoSql databases, e.g. Mongo Db, I’ve had a passing interest in NoSql in the last while so I wanted to get me a piece of the pie, and RavenDB jumped out at me for a few reasons.

• Written in .NET
• Scalability over RDBMS
• RestAPI (although i won’t be using it, my app will have its own REST API using RavenDb managed api underneath)
• .NET API with Linq querying
• Automatic indexing
• Scalability

So lets get started, We want to follow what’s advised in this article: http://ravendb.net/kb/3/using-ravendb-in-an-asp-net-mvc-website however we will be using an ApiController not your standard Controller so we have to modify the solution a little.

Create project

Fire up visual studio and create an new MVC4 project

Add the RavenDb package,

Global.asax.cs

Do the very same that is indicated on the Raven website, We need a single Document Store in our application.

 protected void Application_Start()
        {
            AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();
                        
            RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);
            RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);

            BundleTable.Bundles.RegisterTemplateBundles();

            InitRaven();
        }

        private void InitRaven()
        {
            Store = new DocumentStore { ConnectionStringName = "RavenDB" };
            Store.Initialize();

            IndexCreation.CreateIndexes(Assembly.GetCallingAssembly(), Store);

        }

        public static DocumentStore Store;

Create RavenController

public abstract class RavenController : ApiController
    {
        public RavenController()
        {
            this.AutoSave = true;
            RavenSession = TickTockBaby.Mvc.WebApiApplication.Store.OpenSession();
        }

        public bool AutoSave { get; set; }

        public IDocumentSession RavenSession { get; protected set; }

        protected override void Dispose(bool disposing)
        {
            if (disposing)
            {
                if (RavenSession != null)
                {
                    using (RavenSession)
                    {
                        if (this.AutoSave)
                            RavenSession.SaveChanges();
                        RavenSession.Dispose();
                        RavenSession = null;
                    }
                }
            }

            base.Dispose(disposing);
        } 
    }

Let me explain what I’ve done here…

I’ve initialized the session in the constructor, and cleaned it up in dispose, I also SaveChanges by default unless it gets switched off in a derived class.

Derive from RavenController

public class UsersController : RavenController
    {       
        // GET /api/values
        public IEnumerable<string> Get()
        {
            this.AutoSave = false;
            return RavenSession.Query<User>().Select(u => u.Name);            
        }        
    }

That’s my initial attempt, hope it helps someone out a little.

I’ll post my final solution possibly using Ninject DI after I’ve used RavenDb for a while and get a better feel for it.

Raven Studio

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