Breeze without EF

Absolutely, this is supported.  We simply haven't gotten around to documenting it or providing samples yet.   There are also still some rough edges here but we should have some basic information on this topic out within the next few weeks.

For now, the simplest way to get started with this right now is to simply return an IQueryable<Object> from your ApiController

public class MyController : ApiController {

    // We'll assume that you cannot provide this.
    // [AcceptVerbs("GET")]
    // public String Metadata() {
    //  return ContextProvider.Metadata();
    // }

  [AcceptVerbs("GET")]
    public IQueryable<Object> MyObjects() {
      var stuff =this.GetMyObjects().AsQueryable();
      return stuff;
    }
}

Notice that there is no ContextProvider in this case.  Querying for MyObject from the Breeze client then looks something like this:

  var query = EntityQuery.from("MyObjects")
            .where("City", "startsWith", "San")
            .take(5)
  var myEntityManager.executeQuery(query).then(...)

This assumes that the type of the instances returned by MyObjects contains a property "City".  The Breeze server side code will still translate your client side queries into valid linq queries against the IQueryable provided on the server. 

This query will return "plain" json objects withing the breeze promise method or callback.  If you want these objects to be converted to "first class" breeze entities during the query process, then you will need to provide metadata for each type returned.  This metadata is normally returned from the server but it can also be provided client side via the use of the EntityType, DataProperty and Navigation property ctors. (see the apidocs for more detail on this).

Hope this helps,

Actually, we do use most of what is in the EDMX conceptual model.  But if you want to specify the metadata yourself, you can do something like this:

var fooEntityType = new breeze.entityModel.EntityType(myMetadataStore);
var dp1 = new breeze.entityModel.DataProperty(...);  // take a look at the api docs for DataProperty
fooEntityType.appProperty(dp1);
var dp2 = new breeze.entityModel.NavigationProperty(...); // take a look at the api docs for NavigationProperty

Most of the metadata that you will need to define is contained in the DataProperties and NavigationProperties that make up each EntityType.

Currently, you  have to return "some" metadata, but it can be empty.  We will change this in a later release but for now, just expose an empty EF model.

Try to return the following string:

Edited by pawel - 02-Nov-2012 at 12:57am