This tutorial describes how to connect to Magento.

In this walkthrough:

• Requirements
• General information
• Creating MagentoConnection
• Opening connection
• Closing connection
• Modifying connection

Requirements

In order to connect to Magento you need to have the corresponding account, dotConnect for Magento installed and IDE running. You also have to know the required connection parameters described below.

Note that if you do not use design-time (specifically, if you do not place designer MagentoConnection component from the Toolbox to the form), you have to embed licensing information manually. This is described in topic Licensing.

Required Connection Parameters

To establish a connection to server you have to provide the required connection parameters to dotConnect for Magento. This information is used by MagentoConnection component to connect to Magento. The parameters are represented as a connection string. You can compose the connection string manually or have dotConnect for Magento construct it for you.

The following connection string parameters are required:

• Domain - The address of your Magento store;
• User Id - The user name to login with;
• Service Version - Magento version to connect to - 1.x or 2.x. If you omit this parameter, dotConnect for Magento will try to connect, assuming that target is Magento 1.x;
• API Key - An automatically generated key that is used for connecting to Magento 1.x. If you need to connect to Magento 2.x, use the Password parameter and specify your password instead;
• Password - The password for your Magento 2.x account. If you need to connect to Magento 1.x, use the API Key parameter and specify your API Key instead.

dotConnect for Magento allows connecting to both Magento 1.x and Magento 2.x version. For connecting to Magento 1.x, you need to specify the API Key parameter. You can find the API Key in the User information section of your Magento dashboard.

For connecting to Magento 2.x, you need to set the Service Version parameter to Ver2 and specify the Password parameter instead of API Key

Creating a Connection to Magento

Design time creation

The following assumes that you have IDE running, and you are currently focused on a form designer.

1. Open Toolbox and find MagentoConnection component in dotConnect for Magento category.
2. Double-click the component. Notice that new object appears on the designer underneath the form. If this is first time you create the MagentoConnection in this application it is named magentoConnection1.
3. Click on the magentoConnection1 object and press F4 to focus on object's properties.
4. Enter the required connection string parameters, described above, to the corresponding boxes.
5. Notice that as you assign values to these properties the ConnectionString property is automatically updated to reflect your settings. Now it contains something like "domain=192.168.10.68/magento;user=Test;apikey=testpassword;".
6. If necessary, click the Advanced button and configure other connection string parameters. You can find the description of these connection string parameters in the MagentoConnection.ConnectionString topic.

Run time creation

You can also configure a connection at run-time by setting its ConnectionString property (note that you have to add references to Devart.Data.Magento.dll, Devart.Data.SqlShim.dll, and Devart.Data.dll assemblies):

magentoConnection1.ConnectionString = "domain=192.168.10.68/magento;user=Test;apikey=testpassword;";

magentoConnection1.ConnectionString = "domain=192.168.10.68/magento;user=Test;apikey=testpassword;"

Using connection string builder

If you decide to setup connection by assigning values to several properties, consider using MagentoConnectionStringBuilder class. It has all of the possible connection settings exposed as properties, thus allowing to customize the connection at full extent.

MagentoConnectionStringBuilder connectionStringBuilder = new MagentoConnectionStringBuilder();

connectionStringBuilder.Domain = "192.168.10.68/magento";
connectionStringBuilder.UserId = "Test";
connectionStringBuilder.ServiceVersion = MagentoServiceVersion.Ver2;
connectionStringBuilder.Password = "testpassword";

MagentoConnection myConnection = new MagentoConnection(connectionStringBuilder.ConnectionString);

Dim connectionStringBuilder As MagentoConnectionStringBuilder = New MagentoConnectionStringBuilder

connectionStringBuilder.Domain = "192.168.10.68/magento"
connectionStringBuilder.ServiceVersion = MagentoServiceVersion.Ver2
connectionStringBuilder.UserId = "Test"
connectionStringBuilder.Password = "testpassword"

Dim myConnection As MagentoConnection = New MagentoConnection(connectionStringBuilder.ConnectionString)

Notice that in this example we used MagentoConnection constructor that accepts connection string as argument.

For the information on arguments allowed in the connection string, refer to the description of the MagentoConnection.ConnectionString property.

Creating Connection in Server Explorer

To create a Server Explorer connection, you just need to:

1. Click Connect to Database on the Server Explorer toolbar
   
   
2. If the Magento Data Source is not selected by default, click the Change button.
3. Select Magento Data Source (dotConnect for Magento) and click OK.

After this you can browse Magento objects in Server Explorer.

Opening connection

Opening a connection is as simple as that:

myConnection1.Open();

myConnection1.Open()

Of course, the myConnection1 object must have a valid connection string assigned earlier. When you call Open, dotConnect for Magento tries to find the host and connect to Magento. If any problem occurs it raises an exception with brief explanation on what is wrong. If no problem is encountered dotConnect for Magento tries to establish the connection during ConnectionTimeout interval. Finally, when connection is established, the Open method returns and State property is changed to Open.

In design time you can connect to server in few steps:

1. Right-click on the connection object in designer and then click Connect.
2. In the dialog window provide the required connection parameters.
3. Click on the connection object and press F4 to focus on object's properties.
4. If necessary, click the Advanced button and configure other connection string parameters. You can find the description of these connection string parameters in the MagentoConnection.ConnectionString topic.
5. Click Connect to establish connection.

Or you can simply change the State property to Open in the Properties window to establish a connection using the current connection string.

Closing connection

To close a connection call its Close method, or set its State property to Closed.

The following example summarizes aforementioned information and shows how to create, setup, open, use and then close the connection.

MagentoConnection myConn = new MagentoConnection();
myConn.ConnectionString = "domain=192.168.10.68/magento;user=Test;apikey=testpassword;";
myConn.Open();
MessageBox.Show(myConn.ServerVersion);
myConn.Close();

Dim myConn As MagentoConnection = New MagentoConnection()
myConn.ConnectionString = "domain=192.168.10.68/magento;user=Test;apikey=testpassword;"
myConn.Open()
MessageBox.Show(myConn.ServerVersion)
myConn.Close()

The sample code connects to server, shows its version and then closes the connection. This actually is a rare usage, because in real applications connections are used by other objects like MagentoCommand, MagentoDataReader and others. For more information on this please see corresponding tutorials or reference information.

Modifying Connection

You can modify connection by changing properties of MagentoConnection object. Keep in mind that while some of the properties can be altered freely, most of them close connection when new value is assigned.