MongoDB schema design with C# driver?

Question

Any ideas on how to represent the following with .net objects?

{
    _id: ’T4Y...AC’, // base64-encoded ObjectId
    name: ’Rick’,
    profile: { ... age, location, interests, etc. ... },
    followers: {
    "T4Y...AD": { name: ’Jared’, circles: [ ’python’, ’authors’] },
    "T4Y...AF": { name: ’Bernie’, circles: [ ’python’ ] },
    "T4Y...AI": { name: ’Meghan’, circles: [ ’python’, ’speakers’ ] }
    }
}

If the Mongo "introduction" documents were a little better, people wouldn't have to ask like this. mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Driver+Tutorial is quite lacking when it comes to automatic serialization. — JayC
– JayC, Commented May 30, 2012 at 4:16
And yes, I know, MongoDB uses JSON primarily as a way to show data from and store data to the database, and that document appears to give pretty good example of MongoDB's basic types, but generally I'm not working on JSON from scratch. — JayC
– JayC, Commented May 30, 2012 at 4:19
(the OPs question isn't even using strict JSON... is this even valid in MongoDB? I don't even know.) — JayC
– JayC, Commented May 30, 2012 at 4:32
@JayC: mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Driver+Serialization+Tutorial. What's missing from this? — Craig Wilson
– Craig Wilson, Commented May 30, 2012 at 13:08
@Game99 why do you want to base64 encode the object id? You can apply a BsonRepresentation(BsonType.String) attribute on it and it will work just fine. — Craig Wilson
– Craig Wilson, Commented May 30, 2012 at 13:11

SCB · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-30 03:25:59Z

1

I would imagine it might look something like

[DataContract]
public class data
{
    [BsonId]
    [DataMember(Order = 0]
    public BsonObjectId { get; set; }

    [DataMember(Order = 1]
    public string name { get; set; }

    [DataMember(Order = 2]
    public Profile profile { get; set; }

    [DataMember(Order = 3]
    public Dictionary<string,Follower> followers { get; set;}
}

[DataContract]
public class Profile
{
    [DataMember(Order = 0]
    public int age { get; set; }
    [DataMember(Order = 1]
    public string location { get ;set; }
    [DataMember(Order = 2]
    public string interests { get ;set; }
}

[DataContract]
public class Follower
{

     [DataMember(Order = 0]
    public string name { get; set; }
    [DataMember(Order = 1]
    public string[] circles
}

I believe both Mongo and WCF support dictionaries so yes you could change Followers to a dictionary

edited May 30, 2012 at 3:25

answered May 30, 2012 at 2:55

SCB

3,0942 gold badges27 silver badges25 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

5 Comments

JayC Over a year ago

I'm figuring "followers" actually translates to a dictionary type, but seeing this apparently is using WCF "Serializable" notation, I'm not sure how that translates off the top of my head. Last time I tried to deal with dictionaries in WCF it was a bit wonky, though doable.

SCB Over a year ago

You might want to edit your question to include that its working with WCF. I will update my answer

Craig Wilson Over a year ago

All the DataContract classes can go away and the DataMembers can become BsonElement() -> if you want to change the name of an element, you can include it in the ctor of the BsonElement attribute.

Game99 Over a year ago

I have had troubles with MongoDB serializing dictionaries in the right way.

ford prefect Over a year ago

@CraigWilson I had tried this and the BsonElement Tag it still didnt serialize. (I want to use camel case in my db json and pascal case in my c# code) Have you seen this method work for serialization?

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

MongoDB schema design with C# driver?

1 Answer 1

5 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

5 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related