Display a ConnectionString dialog

Question

I'm trying to create a program in C# that should be able to create, backup and restore a SQL Server database.

For this, the user needs to be able to setup a connection string to the desired SQL Server (and database).

I would like to use the same dialog as for example Visual Studio for creating the connection string.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

The data connection dialog component linked to in this answer is no longer available for download.

However, a (apparently somewhat altered) DataConnectionDialog component has since become available on NuGet.

Installation:

Add the component to your Visual Studio project via the NuGet package manager console:

Install-Package DataConnectionDialog 

Usage example:

// using Microsoft.Data.ConnectionUI; // using System.Windows.Forms;  bool TryGetDataConnectionStringFromUser(out string outConnectionString) {     using (var dialog = new DataConnectionDialog())     {         // If you want the user to select from any of the available data sources, do this:         DataSource.AddStandardDataSources(dialog);          // OR, if you want only certain data sources to be available         // (e.g. only SQL Server), do something like this instead:          dialog.DataSources.Add(DataSource.SqlDataSource);         dialog.DataSources.Add(DataSource.SqlFileDataSource);         …          // The way how you show the dialog is somewhat unorthodox; `dialog.ShowDialog()`         // would throw a `NotSupportedException`. Do it this way instead:         DialogResult userChoice = DataConnectionDialog.Show(dialog);          // Return the resulting connection string if a connection was selected:         if (userChoice == DialogResult.OK)         {              outConnectionString = dialog.ConnectionString;             return true;         }         else         {             outConnectionString = null;             return false;         }     } }