CardHolder - business card storage application

Problem    

Throughout my career, I met many professionals in their respective fields and exchange a few words, and obtained their business cards as well. I used to store them in my cardholder or simply in my cupboard but it was quite frustrating to find a specific business card of someone when you need their services. moreover, there was quite some more annoying situation where I was not at home and don't have any business card at my reach but badly need to contact someone to reach out for their services so bearing in mind that modern problem requires modern solution I decided to create my own application which will solve the issue to store, search and carry all those business cards around.

Solution

1. my first solution was to download an already existing application, but some were paid application some were freemium and all of them did not have the specific feature that I want to use in my day to day basis 
2. I started creating prototypes using two Xamarin which is a cross-platform development for both IOS and android. Due to the fact that I had to learn Xamarin and was i bite rusty when it comes to native development of an android application, I scrap the idea of a mobile application
3. using Angular framework as client-side and ASP.Net core Web API seems a good idea at first but to develop a simple application with simple CRUD operations will be time and resource waste
4. since I wanted a simple application I also considered using a console application, I started the prototype but scrap the idea as well because in terms of experience it was not user friendly.
5. While having a conversation which a colleague, he mentioned a technology called Blazor from Microsoft thus I checked the documentation of the technology online and I was quite amazed and fascinated by the simplicity yet the power of this technology thus I decide to give it a try

Prototype

Using Xamarin technology

Views

Model

Screenshot

Using console application

Main menu

Navigation

Navigation through the console application was pretty much simple, using numbers it would be practical to navigate through menu such as view all cards, view details of a card, add a card, and so on.

View cards and details

CardHolder web Application

To build up the application I used Blazor technology, developed and maintained by Microsoft. It is still considered as a "young" technology with mixed reviews by as far as concern my personal opinion, the technology in question is very powerful and easy to understand the logic of the framework. You don't need to learn alternate technology to develop a full-fledged web application compare to the most common approach where the client-side will be developed using framework such as angular, vue.js, react and so and the backend be a common API using maybe ASP.NET web API

Technology

The technologies used for this project are:

1. Boostrap for visual appearance, HTML and CSS
2. Blazor for web development including front and back end
3. entity framework core
4. SQL server 

Overview

Home page/ cards

View a card

Add a card

Toggle cards view

Listview

Card view

Search

The search is one of the most used feature in the application. it will search every field which contained the searched keyword.

source code snippets

 public List<CardViewModel> Search(string searchWord)
        {
            try
            {
                List<CardViewModel> result = new List<CardViewModel>();
                using (var context = new CardHolderContext())
                {
                    result = (from crd in context.Cards
                              join cat in context.CategoryMasters on crd.CategoryId equals cat.CategoryId
                              join con in context.ContactDetails on crd.CardId equals con.CardId
                              where 
                                    crd.CompanyName.Contains(searchWord) || 
                                    crd.OwnerName.Contains(searchWord) ||
                                    cat.MasterValue.Contains(searchWord)
                              select new CardViewModel()
                              {
                                  CardDetails = crd,
                                  Category = cat,
                                  Contact = con
                              }
                             ).ToList();
                }
                return result;
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                throw new Exception(ex.Message);
            }
           
        }

Search - Snippet hosted by

RAW

 public void Update(CardViewModel card)
        {
            try
            {
                using (var context = new CardHolderContext())
                {
                    var updateCard = context.Cards.Where(x => x.CardId == card.CardDetails.CardId).FirstOrDefault();
                    updateCard.CompanyName = card.CardDetails.CompanyName;
                    updateCard.CategoryId = card.CardDetails.CategoryId;
                    updateCard.JobTitle = card.CardDetails.JobTitle;
                    updateCard.OwnerName = card.CardDetails.OwnerName;
                    updateCard.Tagline = card.CardDetails.JobTitle;
                    updateCard.Website = card.CardDetails.Website;
                    context.SaveChanges();
 
                    var updateContact = context.ContactDetails.Where(x => x.CardId == card.CardDetails.CardId).FirstOrDefault();
                    updateContact.City = card.Contact.City ;
                    updateContact.Country = card.Contact.Country;
                    updateContact.Email = card.Contact.Email;
                    updateContact.FixNumber = card.Contact.FixNumber;
                    updateContact.MobileNumber = card.Contact.MobileNumber;
                    updateContact.Street = card.Contact.Street;
                    context.SaveChanges();
 
                    var deleteSocial = context.SocialMedia.Where(x => x.CardId == card.CardDetails.CardId).ToList();
                    context.SocialMedia.RemoveRange(deleteSocial);
                    context.SaveChanges();
                    
                    if (card.SocialMedia.Count > 0)
                    {
                        foreach (var item in card.SocialMedia)
                        {
                            item.CardId = card.CardDetails.CardId;
                            item.SocialId = 0;
                            context.SocialMedia.Add(item);
                        }
                    }
                    context.SaveChanges();
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                throw new Exception(ex.Message);
            }
        }

Update - Snippet hosted by

RAW

public void Delete(int id)
        {
            try
            {
                using (var context = new CardHolderContext())
                {
                    var deleteCard = context.Cards.Where(x => x.CardId == id).FirstOrDefault();
                    context.Cards.Remove(deleteCard);
                    var deleteSocial = context.SocialMedia.Where(x => x.CardId == id).ToList();
                    context.SocialMedia.RemoveRange(deleteSocial);
 
                    context.SaveChanges();
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                throw new Exception(ex.Message);
            }
        }

Delete - Snippet hosted by

RAW

 public CardViewModel Read(int id)
        {
            try
            {
                CardViewModel result = new CardViewModel();
                using (var context = new CardHolderContext())
                {
                    result = (from crd in context.Cards
                              where crd.CardId == id
                              join cat in context.CategoryMasters on crd.CategoryId equals cat.CategoryId
                              join con in context.ContactDetails on crd.CardId equals con.CardId
                              select new CardViewModel()
                              {
                                  CardDetails = crd,
                                  Category = cat,
                                  Contact = con
                              }
                             ).FirstOrDefault();
 
                    if (result == null)
                        throw new Exception("Invalid id");
 
                    result.SocialMedia = new List<SocialMedium>();
                    result.SocialMedia = (from soc in context.SocialMedia
                                          where soc.CardId == id
                                          select soc
                                          ).ToList();
                }
                return result;
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                throw new Exception(ex.Message);
            }
        }
 

Read - Snippet hosted by

RAW

 public void Create(CardViewModel card)
        {
            try
            {
                using (var context = new CardHolderContext())
                {
                    context.Cards.Add(card.CardDetails);
                    context.SaveChanges();
 
                    card.Contact.CardId = card.CardDetails.CardId;
                    context.ContactDetails.Add(card.Contact);
 
                    if (card.SocialMedia.Count > 0)
                    {
                        foreach (var item in card.SocialMedia)
                        {
                            item.CardId = card.CardDetails.CardId;
                        }
                    }
 
                    context.SocialMedia.AddRange(card.SocialMedia);
                    context.SaveChanges();
 
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                throw new Exception(ex.Message);
            }
        }

CreateCards - Snippet hosted by

RAW

  public List<CardViewModel> Retrieve()
        {
            try
            {
                List<CardViewModel> result = new List<CardViewModel>();
                using (var context = new CardHolderContext())
                {
                    result = (from crd in context.Cards
                              join cat in context.CategoryMasters on crd.CategoryId equals cat.CategoryId
                              join con in context.ContactDetails on crd.CardId equals con.CardId
                              select new CardViewModel()
                                {
                                    CardDetails = crd,
                                    Category = cat,
                                    Contact = con
                                }
                             ).ToList();
                }
                return result;
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                throw new Exception(ex.Message);
            }
        }

RetrieveCards - Snippet hosted by

RAW