{"id":1963,"date":"2015-12-17T00:21:33","date_gmt":"2015-12-17T00:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.couchbase.com\/blog\/?p=1963"},"modified":"2025-06-13T21:02:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T04:02:08","slug":"introducing-linq2couchbase-developer-preview-1-the-linq-provider-for-couchbase-n1ql","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.couchbase.com\/blog\/introducing-linq2couchbase-developer-preview-1-the-linq-provider-for-couchbase-n1ql\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing Linq2Couchbase Developer Preview 1: The Linq provider for Couchbase N1QL!"},"content":{"rendered":"
*Sample code for this post is available in the couchbase-net-examples<\/a> project here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/address>\n

I am very excited to announce developer preview #1 of the official Linq provider for Couchbase N1QL! This is a very early pre-release to introduce the provider, preview it\u2019s basic functionality and illustrate how to use it. In this blog, I will create a sample application that goes over the steps on how to use the provider today.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer<\/h2>\n

Being a pre-release expect the public API to change significantly until the beta becomes available. Note that the Couchbase.Linq project depends upon the GA release of the SDK. Do not use this provider in production until the GA of 2.2.0 SDK!<\/p>\n

Getting the package<\/h2>\n

The package is a pre-release up on NuGet and can be found here<\/a>. If you are using Visual Studio, you\u2019ll probably want to either use the NuGet Package Manager or the NuGet Package Manager Console to include the dependencies in your project.<\/p>\n

First, create a console application using Visual Studio. Then using the Package Manager, search for Couchbase.Linq:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Make sure you select \u201cInclude Prerelease\u201d when you search, otherwise the package will not turn up in the search results. Click \u201cinstall\u201d and all of the dependencies will be installed for you. Finally close the Package Manager dialog.<\/p>\n

Configuration and Initialization<\/h2>\n

The current Couchbase Linq provider has a hard dependency on the ClusterHelper class from the Couchbase .NET 2.1 SDK. The ClusterHelper is class that makes it easy to manage buckets and other resources that for performance reasons must be long-lived. It\u2019s a singleton for a Cluster object and a \u201cmultiton\u201d for Bucket references. This dependency will likely be removed in future versions, but must be considered when you use the Linq provider in your application.<\/p>\n

To handle this dependency, you simply have to use the ClusterHelper in your application and explicitly call Initialize() exactly once within your application\u2019s lifespan. By default localhost will be used to bootstrap the client, but you can use the overload that takes a ClientConfiguration that can be customized as you please.<\/p>\n