Summary

Setup

Setting up SubSonic's AdvancedTemplates is pretty simple and involve's 4 steps.

Add a Reference to SubSonic

This part is pretty simple: right-click your project, Add Reference, and Browse to find the SubSonic 3.0 dll.

Add a Connection String

In order to work with your database you'll need a connection string. If you're working with a provider other than SQL Server (such as SQLite), you'll need to specify which one using "providerName":

    <add name="Northwind" 
         connectionString="server=.\SQLExpress;database=SubSonic;integrated security=true;" 
         providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>
 
    <add name="NorthwindSQLite" 
         connectionString="Data Source=C:\my.db" 
         providerName="System.Data.SQLite"/>
    <add name="NorthwindMySql" 
         connectionString="server=localhost;database=northwind;user id=root; password=" 
         providerName="MySql.Data.MySqlClient"/>

Set The Connection In The Templates

The T4 Templates that create the classes you're going to work with need to know what your connection string is. To set this, open up the file called "Settings.ttinclude". Below the @import statements, you'll see three settings you'll need to set:

    const string Namespace = "Northwind.Data";
    const string ConnectionName = "Northwind";
 
    // This is the name of your database and is used in naming the repository.
    const string DatabaseName = "Northwind";

The main one you need to set is "ConnectionName" - this tells SubSonic which connection to use in the DB. The namespace constant is the namespace of the classes that SubSonic will generate.

Add the T4 Templates To Your Project

After you've set the settings above, just drag into your project. Whenever Visual Studio 2008 sees a "tt" file, it will automatically execute it - so you don't have to do anything, it will just run.

If you make a change to your database, just right-click the SubSonic3Creator.tt file and select "Run Custom Tool" - this will execute it again.

As opposed to the ActiveRecord template - the AdvancedTemplate uses the T4 Toolkit to do some fancy stuff - including outputting a file for each class (many people like this) and also creating a generation log so you know what it's doing.

Querying

Querying the AdvancedTemplates works just like Linq to Sql:

var db = new Northwind.Data.NorthwindDB();
var qry = from p in db.Products
          select p;

var db = new Northwind.Data.NorthwindDB();
var products = db.Select.From<Northwind.Data.Product>()
    .ExecuteTypedList<Northwind.Data.Product>();

Testing