bucket-context.md

The BucketContext

The public API for Linq2Couchbase is the BucketContext; this object is similar to the DbContext in Linq2SQL and the DataContext from the EntityFramework. It's primary purpose is to provide and interface for building and submitting queries to a Couchbase server Bucket. Internally, the BucketContext uses a Cluster object and CouchbaseBucket to handle communication and to send queries and updates to the server.

Creating a BucketContext

The BucketContext has a dependency on ICluster and IBucket objects; in your application you will need to have instantiated and initialized a Cluster object before you can create a BucketContext.

IBucket bucket = await bucketProvider.GetBucketAsync();

var context = new BucketContext(bucket);

It's important to note that the ICluster and IBucket objects are a long-lived objects, so you will usually want to create a singleton per application and reuse it over the lifespan of the application. A BucketContext is slightly different; it contains no Dispose method and is more ephemeral compared to the Cluster.

Extending BucketContext

To extend BucketContext into a more powerful tool exposing strongly-typed document sets, inherit from BucketContext and add properties that return IDocumentSet<T>. These properties will be automatically initialized with an appropriate object for running queries.

public class MyContext : BucketContext
{
    // Adding "= null!" is only necessary if nullable reference types is enabled
    public IDocumentSet<Airline> Airlines { get; set; } = null!;
    public IDocumentSet<Airport> Airports { get; set; } = null!;
    public IDocumentSet<Route> Routes { get; set; } = null!;

    public MyContext(IBucket bucket) : base(bucket)
    {
    }
}