I will try to explain my scenario the best way I can. I have the following tables in my database:
Products{ProductId, CategoryId ...}
Categories{CategoryId ...}
CategoryProperties{CategoryPropertyId, CategoryId, Name ...}
PropertyValues{ProductId, CategoryPropertyId, Value ...}
So the goal is to have list of products which belongs to some category and each category can have 'n' number of properties with values in the 'PropertyValues' table. I have a query that returns data based on 'categoryId' so I can always get different results from the database:
For the CPU category:
intel i7 | CPU | Model | Socket | L1 Cash | L2 Cahs | etc.
For the HDD category:
samsung F3 | HDD | Model | Speed | GB | etc.
So based on categories from my query as a result I always can get different column numbers and names. For database access I use simple ADO.NET call to stored procedure that return result. But because query result is dynamic in it's nature I don't know what is a good way to read this data.
I made a Product
entity but I am confused how to make it really :(
I thought that I can make a Product
entity and make other entities which inherit Product
like Cpu
, Hdd
, Camera
, PcCase
, GraphicCard
, MobilePhone
, Gps
etc.
but I think that it's stupid because I can end this with 200+ entities in domain.
What would you do in this situation?
How to read and where to put this dynamic properties?
UPDATE - some solution
All right based on @millimoose suggestion for Dictionary
and @Tim Schmelter idea to use DataTable
object I came to some solution.
Now... this works I get data read them and I can display them.
But I still need advice from smarter people than me on am I did this good or should I handle this better or I am made some spageti code.
So here what I did:
public class Product
{
public Product()
{
this.DynamicProperties = new List<Dictionary<string, string>>();
}
public List<Dictionary<string, string>> DynamicProperties { get; set; }
}
...
List<Product> products = new List<Product>();
...
using (SqlDataAdapter a = new SqlDataAdapter(cmd))
{
DataTable t = new DataTable();
a.Fill(t);
Product p = null;
foreach (DataRow row in t.Rows)
{
p = new Product();
foreach (DataColumn col in t.Columns)
{
string property = col.ColumnName.ToString();
string propertyValue = row[col.ColumnName].ToString();
Dictionary<string, string> dictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>();
dictionary.Add(property, propertyValue);
p.DynamicProperties.Add(dictionary);
}
products.Add(p);
}
}