Another common method for configuring NHibernate uses a separate xml configuration file. In this recipe, I'll show you how to configure NHibernate using hibernate.cfg.xml to provide an identical configuration to the previous recipe.
- Complete the
Eg.Coremodel and mapping recipes from Chapter 1. - Add a console application project to your solution named
ConfigByXML. - Set it as the Startup project for your solution.
- In the
ConfigByXMLproject, add references toNHibernate.dllandNHibernate.ByteCode.Castle.dllin theLibfolder. - In
ConfigByXML, add a reference to theEg.Coreproject.
- Add an
App.configfile with this configuration:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <connectionStrings> <add name="db" connectionString="Server=.SQLExpress; Database=NHCookbook; Trusted_Connection=SSPI"/> </connectionStrings> </configuration> - Add an XML file named
hibernate.cfg.xmlwith this XML:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <hibernate-configuration xmlns="urn:nhibernate-configuration-2.2"> <session-factory> <property name="proxyfactory.factory_class"> NHibernate.ByteCode.Castle.ProxyFactoryFactory, NHibernate.ByteCode.Castle </property> <property name="dialect"> NHibernate.Dialect.MsSql2008Dialect, NHibernate </property> <property name="connection.connection_string_name"> db </property> <property name="adonet.batch_size"> 100 </property> <mapping assembly="Eg.Core"/> </session-factory> </hibernate-configuration> - On the Solution Explorer tab, right-click on hibernate.cfg.xml and select Properties.
- Change Copy to Output Directory from Do not copy to Copy if newer.
- Open
Program.csand addusing NHibernate.Cfg;. - In your
Mainfunction, add the following code to configure NHibernate:var nhConfig = new Configuration().Configure(); var sessionFactory = nhConfig.BuildSessionFactory(); Console.WriteLine("NHibernate Configured!"); Console.ReadKey(); - Build and run your application. You will see the text NHibernate Configured!.
This recipe works in the same way as the previous recipe. We still use the db connection string defined in the App.config. However, in this recipe, we've moved the hibernate-configuration element from the App.config file to hibernate.cfg.xml. Just as with the mappings, we get full IntelliSense from the schema file we added to the solution back in Chapter 1. We change Copy to Output Directory to ensure that our hibernate.cfg.xml file is copied with the build output.
By default, NHibernate looks for its configuration in the hibernate.cfg.xml. However, we can specify a different configuration file using the following code:
var cfgFile = "cookbook.cfg.xml"; var nhConfig = new Configuration().Configure(cfgFile);
Additionally, we can embed our configuration file in the assembly. In this case, we pass in the assembly containing the resource as well as the embedded resource name.
Finally, we can pass an XmlReader to provide our configuration from any other source.