In the next release of
Windows Template Studio (the amazing tool for scaffolding your modern Windows apps) we'll be adding options to make it easier to connect to a
SQL Server database or also create your own
Web API.
If you've done, or are interested in either of these things your feedback will be gratefully appreciated.
SQL Server
In many enterprise scenarios, the ability to connect to data from a SQL Server database is a must. Adding appropriate references to a project can be more work than many developers would like and so this option makes setting up the project appropriately only require a single click.
Of course, it's still necessary to retrieve and load the required data but you'd have to do that anyway. What this option does is just set up the project so that this is easy to do. It also adds appropriate
TODO notes so you know where the generated code needs to be modified. Additionally, there's also a method that shows how to use data from a NorthWind sample database as a replacement for the SampleData that is used by default by the pages included in the generated app.
This is deliberately not an option for generating an app based on the contents of a database. There are other tools available if that's something you want to do.
Web API (and HTTP data access)
Taking heavy inspiration from the MobileAppService option when creating a Xamarin.Forms app, we've added the ability to include an ASP.NET CORE Web API project in the generated solution. If you are creating a custom web-based API to go with your new app, this should make it that little bit easier.
Differences between these new options and the Xamarin.Forms version are that we take a dependency on the "App.Core" shared library to avoid duplication, return our own `SampleData` in the default controller, and we've separated the code for the app to retrieve content from the API in a separate `HttpDataService` class so that they're available in apps that don't want (or need) to include the Web API directly.
As with everything that is included in Windows Template Studio we tread a delicate balance between providing enough to avoid developers needing to do more than they must, but also not being explicit on how something
must be done, or including lots of code that must be removed.
If you have thoughts on any of the above, I'd love to hear them.
As an own-trumpet-blowing aside, the addition of these options means I now personally claim responsibility for twenty (20) of the options available in the WTS wizard. I've done a load of other stuff too (VB.NET support & internal testing being the main areas) but thought this was a nice milestone to celebrate.
