DataStax Enterprise C# Driver

This driver is built on top of DataStax C# driver for Apache Cassandra and provides the following additions for DataStax Enterprise:

  • IAuthenticator implementations that use the authentication scheme negotiation in the server-side DseAuthenticator.
  • DSE graph integration.
  • Serializers for geospatial types which integrate seamlessly with the driver.

The driver supports .NET Framework 4.5+ and .NET Core 1+.

The DataStax Enterprise C# Driver can be used solely with DataStax Enterprise. Please consult the license.

Installation

Get it on Nuget

PM> Install-Package Dse

Latest stable on Nuget.org

Documentation

Getting Help

You can use the project mailing list or create a ticket on the Jira issue tracker.

Upgrading from previous versions

If you are upgrading from previous versions of the driver, visit the Upgrade Guide.

Getting Started

IDseCluster and IDseSession extend their CQL driver counterparts, so you can use Dse instances to execute CQL queries.

using Dse;
IDseCluster cluster = DseCluster.Builder()
                                .AddContactPoint("127.0.0.1")
                                .Build();
IDseSession session = cluster.Connect();
Row row = session.Execute("select * from system.local").First();
Console.WriteLine(row.GetValue<string>("cluster_name"));

Authentication

For clients connecting to a DSE cluster secured with DseAuthenticator, two authentication providers are included:

  • DsePlainTextAuthProvider: plain-text authentication;
  • DseGssapiAuthProvider: GSSAPI authentication.

To configure a provider, pass it when initializing the cluster:

using Dse;
using Dse.Auth;
IDseCluster dseCluster = DseCluster.Builder()
    .AddContactPoint("127.0.0.1")
    .WithAuthProvider(new DseGssapiAuthProvider())
    .Build();

Graph

IDseSession has dedicated methods to execute graph queries:

using Dse.Graph;
session.ExecuteGraph("system.createGraph('demo').ifNotExist().build()");

GraphStatement s1 = new SimpleGraphStatement("g.addV(label, 'test_vertex')").SetGraphName("demo");
session.ExecuteGraph(s1);

GraphStatement s2 = new SimpleGraphStatement("g.V()").SetGraphName("demo");
GraphResultSet rs = session.ExecuteGraph(s2);

IVertex vertex = rs.First().To<IVertex>();
Console.WriteLine(vertex.Label);

Graph options

You can set default graph options when initializing the cluster. They will be used for all graph statements. For example, to avoid repeating SetGraphName("demo") on each statement:

IDseCluster dseCluster = DseCluster.Builder()
    .AddContactPoint("127.0.0.1")
    .WithGraphOptions(new GraphOptions().SetName("demo"))
    .Build();

If an option is set manually on a GraphStatement, it always takes precedence; otherwise the default option is used. This might be a problem if a default graph name is set, but you explicitly want to execute a statement targeting system, for which no graph name must be set. In that situation, use GraphStatement.SetSystemQuery():

GraphStatement s = new SimpleGraphStatement("system.createGraph('demo').ifNotExist().build()")
    .SetSystemQuery();
session.ExecuteGraph(s);

Query execution

As explained, graph statements can be executed with the session’s ExecuteGraph method. There is also an asynchronous equivalent called ExecuteGraphAsync that returns a Task that can be awaited upon.

Handling results

Graph queries return a GraphResultSet, which is a sequence of GraphNode elements:

GraphResultSet rs = session.ExecuteGraph(new SimpleGraphStatement("g.V()"));

// Iterating as IGraphNode
foreach (IGraphNode r in rs)
{
    Console.WriteLine(r);
}

IGraphNode represents a response item returned by the server. Each item can be converted to the expected type:

GraphResultSet rs = session.ExecuteGraph(new SimpleGraphStatement("g.V()"));
IVertex vertex = rs.First().To<IVertex>();
Console.WriteLine(vertex.Label);

Additionally, you can apply the conversion to all the sequence by using GraphResultSet.To<T>() method:

foreach (IVertex vertex in rs.To<IVertex>())
{
    Console.WriteLine(vertex.Label);
}

GraphNode provides implicit conversion operators to string, int, long and others in order to improve code readability, allowing the following C# syntax:

var rs = session.ExecuteGraph(new SimpleGraphStatement("g.V().has('name', 'marko').values('location')"));
foreach (string location in rs)
{
    Console.WriteLine(location);
}

GraphNode inherits from DynamicObject, allowing you to consume it using the dynamic keyword and/or as a dictionary.

dynamic r = session.ExecuteGraph(new SimpleGraphStatement("g.V()")).First();

Parameters

Graph query parameters are always named. Parameter bindings are passed as an anonymous type or as a IDictionary<string, object> alongside the query:

session.ExecuteGraph("g.addV(label, vertexLabel)", new { vertexLabel = "test_vertex_2" });

Note that, unlike in CQL, Gremlin placeholders are not prefixed with “:”.

Prepared statements

Prepared graph statements are not supported by DSE Graph yet (they will be added in the near future).

Geospatial types

DSE 5 comes with a set of additional types to represent geospatial data: PointType, LineStringType and PolygonType:

cqlsh> CREATE TABLE points_of_interest(name text PRIMARY KEY, coords 'PointType');
cqlsh> INSERT INTO points_of_interest (name, coords) VALUES ('Eiffel Tower', 'POINT(48.8582 2.2945)');

The DSE driver includes C# representations of these types, that can be used directly in queries:

using Dse.Geometry;
Row row = session.Execute("SELECT coords FROM points_of_interest WHERE name = 'Eiffel Tower'").First();
Point coords = row.GetValue<Point>("coords");

var statement = new SimpleStatement("INSERT INTO points_of_interest (name, coords) VALUES (?, ?)",
    "Washington Monument", 
    new Point(38.8895, 77.0352));
session.Execute(statement);

Compatibility

  • DataStax Enterprise versions 4.5 and above.
  • .NET Framework versions 4.5 and above and .NET Core versions 1.0 and above.

Note: DataStax products do not support big-endian systems.

License

© DataStax, Inc.

The full license terms are available at http://www.datastax.com/terms/datastax-dse-driver-license-terms