Display Data In Grid Using Web API 2 And ReactJS

Introduction

In this post, we will see how to bind data in a grid by using ReactJS library, ASP.Net Web API 2, and Entity Framework ORM.

In this demo, we are going create a sample application, then generate mapping of our employee table by using Entity Framework, after that, we will create a service which returns all data from employee table. Finally, ReactJS as library will be used in order to bind data in a grid.

Let’s start.

SQL Database part

Here, you will find the scripts to create database and table.

Create Database 

USE [master]
GO

/****** Object:  Database [DbEmployee]    Script Date: 3/26/2017 6:19:33 AM ******/
CREATE DATABASE [DbEmployee]
 CONTAINMENT = NONE
 ON  PRIMARY
( NAME = N'DbEmployee', FILENAME = N'c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\DbEmployee.mdf' , SIZE = 3072KB , MAXSIZE = UNLIMITED, FILEGROWTH = 1024KB )
 LOG ON
( NAME = N'DbEmployee_log', FILENAME = N'c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\DbEmployee_log.ldf' , SIZE = 1024KB , MAXSIZE = 2048GB , FILEGROWTH = 10%)
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET COMPATIBILITY_LEVEL = 110
GO

IF (1 = FULLTEXTSERVICEPROPERTY('IsFullTextInstalled'))
begin
EXEC [DbEmployee].[dbo].[sp_fulltext_database] @action = 'enable'
end
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET ANSI_NULL_DEFAULT OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET ANSI_NULLS OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET ANSI_PADDING OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET ANSI_WARNINGS OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET ARITHABORT OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET AUTO_CLOSE OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET AUTO_CREATE_STATISTICS ON
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET AUTO_SHRINK OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET AUTO_UPDATE_STATISTICS ON
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET CURSOR_CLOSE_ON_COMMIT OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET CURSOR_DEFAULT  GLOBAL
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET NUMERIC_ROUNDABORT OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET RECURSIVE_TRIGGERS OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET  DISABLE_BROKER
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET AUTO_UPDATE_STATISTICS_ASYNC OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET DATE_CORRELATION_OPTIMIZATION OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET TRUSTWORTHY OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET PARAMETERIZATION SIMPLE
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET HONOR_BROKER_PRIORITY OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET RECOVERY SIMPLE
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET  MULTI_USER
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET PAGE_VERIFY CHECKSUM
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET DB_CHAINING OFF
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET FILESTREAM( NON_TRANSACTED_ACCESS = OFF )
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET TARGET_RECOVERY_TIME = 0 SECONDS
GO

ALTER DATABASE [DbEmployee] SET  READ_WRITE
GO

Create Table 

USE [DbEmployee]
GO

/****** Object:  Table [dbo].[EmployeeTable]    Script Date: 3/26/2017 6:20:03 AM ******/
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO

SET ANSI_PADDING ON
GO

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[EmployeeTable](
    [EmployeeID] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
    [FirstName] [varchar](50) NULL,
    [LastName] [varchar](50) NULL,
    [Gender] [varchar](50) NULL,
    [Designation] [nchar](10) NULL,
    [Salary] [int] NULL,
    [City] [varchar](50) NULL,
    [Country] [varchar](50) NULL,
 CONSTRAINT [PK_EmployeeTable] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED
(
    [EmployeeID] ASC
)WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY]
) ON [PRIMARY]

GO

SET ANSI_PADDING OFF
GO

After creating the table, you can add some records as shown below.

Create your Web API application

Open Visual Studio and select File >> New Project.

The "New Project" window will pop up. Select ASP.NET Web Application (.NET Framework), name your project, and click OK.

Next step is to select template. In this example, we need to choose Web API template and click Ok button.

After creating our project, it’s time to add ADO.NET Entity Data Model. Let’s Go.

Adding ADO.NET Entity Data Model

For adding ADO.NET Entity Framework. Right click on the project name, click Add > Add New Item. Dialog box will pop up, inside Visual C# select Data then ADO.NET Entity Data Model, and enter name for your Dbcontext model as DbEmployee, finally click Add.

Now, we are going to choose EF Designer from database as show below.

After clicking Next button, dialog will pop up with the name connection properties. You need to enter your server name and connect to a database panel, selecting database via dropdown List (DB Employee), then click OK button.

In the final step, dialog Entity Data Model Wizard will pop up for choosing object which we want to use. In our case we are going to choose Employee table and click Finish button. Finally we see that EDMX model generates EmployeeTable class.

Create a controller

Now, we are going to create a controller. Right click on the controllers folder > Add > Controller> selecting Web API 2 Controller – Empty > click Add.

Enter Controller name (‘EmployeeController’).

EmployeeController.cs 

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Web.Http;

namespace DisplayDataReactJS.Controllers
{
    [RoutePrefix("api/Employee")]
    public class EmployeeController : ApiController
    {
        //Db Context
        DbEmployeeEntities db = new DbEmployeeEntities();

        [Route("GetEmployeeList")]
        public IQueryable<EmployeeTable> GetEmployeeList()
        {
            return db.EmployeeTables.AsQueryable();
        }

    }
}

As you can see, I am creating GetEmployeeList() action to select all data from employee table in JSON format.

ReactJS part

Before all this, we are installing ReactJS library. For this, open package manager console and running the following commands:

PM> install-package react.js

PM> install-package React.Web.Mvc4

In order to create new jsx file. Right click on Scripts folder > Add > JavaScript File.

EmployeeJSX.jsx 

var EmployeeRow = React.createClass({

      render: function () {
          return(
              <tr>
                  <td>{this.props.item.EmployeeID}</td>
                  <td>{this.props.item.FirstName}</td>
                  <td>{this.props.item.LastName}</td>
                  <td>{this.props.item.Gender}</td>
                  <td>{this.props.item.Designation}</td>
                  <td>{this.props.item.Salary}</td>
                  <td>{this.props.item.City}</td>
                  <td>{this.props.item.Country}</td>
              </tr>

              );
      }
  });

  var EmployeeTable = React.createClass({

      getInitialState: function(){

          return{
              result:[]
          }
      },
      componentWillMount: function(){

          var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
          xhr.open('get', this.props.url, true);
          xhr.onload = function () {
              var response = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText);

              this.setState({ result: response });

          }.bind(this);
          xhr.send();
      },
      render: function(){
          var rows = [];
          this.state.result.forEach(function (item) {
              rows.push(<EmployeeRow  key={item.EmployeeID} item={item}/>);
      });
  return (<table className="table">
     <thead>
         <tr>
            <th>EmployeeID</th>
            <th>FirstName</th>
            <th>LastName</th>
            <th>Gender</th>
            <th>Designation</th>
            <th>Salary</th>
            <th>City</th>
            <th>Country</th>
         </tr>
     </thead>

      <tbody>
          {rows}
      </tbody>

  </table>);
  }

  });

  ReactDOM.render(<EmployeeTable url="api/Employee/GetEmployeeList"/>,
          document.getElementById('grid'))

Create HTML Page

To add HTML Page. Right click on project name > Add > HTML Page.

EmployeeGrid.html 

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>.: Employee Grid :.</title>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
</head>
<body>
    <h3>Employee List - Web API 2 & ReactJS </h3>

    <div id="grid" class="container">

    </div>

    <!--CSS-->
    <link href="Content/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet" />
    <!-- JS -->
    <script src="Scripts/jquery-1.10.2.min.js"></script>

    <script src="Scripts/react/react.js"></script>
    <script src="Scripts/react/react-dom.js"></script>

    <script src="Scripts/EmployeeJSX.jsx"></script>



</body>
</html>

Note

Don’t forget to add the following libraries in your HTML page. 

<!--CSS-->
    <link href="Content/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet" />


    <!-- JS -->
    <script src="Scripts/jquery-1.10.2.min.js"></script>

    <script src="Scripts/react/react.js"></script>
    <script src="Scripts/react/react-dom.js"></script>

    <script src="Scripts/EmployeeJSX.jsx"></script>

Output

Now build your application and you can see the following output.

Happy Coding.