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Simple column mapping

You can map ordinary columns to properties or to fields directly.

Mapping columns to properties

The simplest form to map a property declared on your class to a column in the database table is to use PropertyAttribute without parameters. ActiveRecord will assume that the column name is the same as the property name. For example, given the following table script:

CREATE TABLE Entity (
    [id] [int] IDENTITY (1, 1) NOT NULL,
    [name] [varchar] (20) NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]

The mapping for this class would be (including the Primary Key):

using Castle.ActiveRecord;

[ActiveRecord]
public class Entity : ActiveRecordBase
{
    private int id;
    private string name;
    
    [PrimaryKey(PrimaryKeyType.Native)]
    private int Id
    {
        get { return id; }
        set { id = value; }
    }
    
    [Property]
    public String Name
    {
        get { return name; }
        set { name = value; }
    }

}

If the column had a different name, for example EntityName, you could use:

    private string name;
    
    [Property("name")]
    public String Name
    {
        get { return name; }
        set { name = value; }
    }

You do not need a setter for the primary key, but NHibernate needs to set the value somehow. You can then specify the Access for it, for example:

    private string name;
    
    [Property(Access=PropertyAccess.FieldCamelcase)]
    public String Name
    {
        get { return name; }
        set { name = value; }
    }

Please refer to the Reference Manual's Attributes article for further information.

Mapping columns to fields

Although property binding seems more natural, fields can also be mapped using the FieldAttribute. The field can be of any visibility.

The usage is the same as PropertyAttribute.

    [Field]
    private string name;

Please refer to the Reference Manual's Attributes article for further information.

Large objects

If your table have columns for large content (text or binary), you must specify the column type using the property ColumnType, which is present on both PropertyAttribute and FieldAttribute

Value to use	.Net type	Database type
StringClob	string	Text
BinaryBlob	byte[]	Binary
Serializable	any object that implements serializable	Binary

Nullable types

As you know, value types in .net cannot assume a null value. Often however, column on the database like ints or DateTime are nullable.

For these situation, and if you are using .Net Framework 1.1, you should reference the assembly Nullables and declare the nullable counter part type. For example:

using Castle.ActiveRecord;
using Nullables;

[ActiveRecord]
public class Entity : ActiveRecordBase
{
    private int id;
    private NullableInt32 age;
    private NullableDateTime created;
    private NullableBoolean accepted;
    
    // omitted primary key
    
    [Property]
    public NullableInt32 Age
    {
        get { return age; }
        set { age = value; }
    }

    [Property]
    public NullableDateTime CreatedAt
    {
        get { return created; }
        set { created = value; }
    }

    [Property]
    public NullableBoolean Accepted
    {
        get { return accepted; }
        set { accepted = value; }
    }
}

If you happen to be using .Net Framework 2.0 then you probably know that it does have support for nullable types. In that case, the example above can be translated to:

using Castle.ActiveRecord;

[ActiveRecord]
public class Entity : ActiveRecordBase
{
    private int id;
    private Int32? age;
    private DateTime? created;
    private Boolean? accepted;
    
    // omitted primary key
    
    [Property]
    public Int32? Age
    {
        get { return age; }
        set { age = value; }
    }

    [Property]
    public DateTime? CreatedAt
    {
        get { return created; }
        set { created = value; }
    }

    [Property]
    public Boolean? Accepted
    {
        get { return accepted; }
        set { accepted = value; }
    }
}

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