How to connect to SQL Server CE using ADO.NET

Question

I have a EntityModel created from ADO.NET that connects to my database. I want to fill a DataGridview . For that I'm following this code:

using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlServerCe;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace WindowsFormsApplication5
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
public Form1()
{
    InitializeComponent();
    FillData();
}

void FillData()
{
    // 1
    // Open connection
    using (SqlCeConnection c = new SqlCeConnection(
    Properties.Settings.Default.DataConnectionString))
    {
    c.Open();
    // 2
    // Create new DataAdapter
    using (SqlCeDataAdapter a = new SqlCeDataAdapter(
        "SELECT * FROM Animals", c))
    {
        // 3
        // Use DataAdapter to fill DataTable
        DataTable t = new DataTable();
        a.Fill(t);
        // 4
        // Render data onto the screen
        dataGridView1.DataSource = t;
    }
    }
}
}

This code comes from a Web Page, so I'm trying to adapt it to my ADO.NET model. So, as I'm not sure where the Properties.Settings.Default.DataConnectionString comes from, I thought it was the connection string used to connect to my database, so, following my Entity Model , I wrote this to get the connection string:

SqlCeConnection c = new SqlCeConnection(db.Connection.ConnectionString);

Where db is my Entity Model created like this:

private dbEntities db = new dbEntities();

But this db.Connection.ConnectionString returns this: "name= dbEntities" , so I changed it to db.Connection.DataSource , that returns this string:

"C:\\\\Users\\\\user\\\\Documents\\\\Visual Studio 2010\\\\Projects\\\\ProjectName\\\\MySQLProject\\\\bin\\\\Debug\\\\db.sdf" string

But it says that the string format is not adjusted (obviously...). I'm using SQL Server, but I'm not sure how to get that connection :(

The Properties.Settings.Default.DataConnectionString says this:

        Properties.Settings.Default.dbConnectionString  'System.Windows.Forms.PropertyStore' 

does not contain a definition for 'Settings' and no extension method 'Settings' accepting a first argument of type 'System.Windows.Forms.PropertyStore' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

Answer 1

The message does not mean the connection string is in wrong format! Is says that there are no settings in your project.

Are you sure that you created a respective setting? To edit them, double click the "Properties" entry in your project, then switch to the "Settings" tab. If there's no entry dbConnectionString , create one.