Why is NHibernate not returning any data?

Question

I am having some problem configuring NHibernate to retrieve data in my MVC 4 application.

To keep things simple I have configured all code in the Index method.

Here is code for my Category controller :

and here is my configuration in web.config :

<hibernate-configuration xmlns="urn:nhibernate-configuration-2.2">
    <session-factory name="NHibernate.Test">
      <property name="connection.driver_class">
        NHibernate.Driver.SqlClientDriver
      </property>
      <property name="connection.connection_string">
        Data Source=.;Initial Catalog=UsingNH;uid=myuid;Password=mypwd
      </property>
      <property name="adonet.batch_size">10</property>
      <property name="show_sql">true</property>
      <property name="dialect">NHibernate.Dialect.MsSql2005Dialect</property>
      <property name="use_outer_join">true</property>
      <property name="command_timeout">60</property>
      <property name="query.substitutions">true 1, false 0, yes 'Y', no 'N'</property>
      <property name="proxyfactory.factory_class">
        NHibernate.ByteCode.LinFu.ProxyFactoryFactory, NHibernate.ByteCode.LinFu
      </property>
    </session-factory>
  </hibernate-configuration>

Mapping file for Category is

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 

<hibernate-mapping xmlns="nhibernate-mapping-2.2" namespace="UsingNHibernate.Models" assembly="UsingNHibernate">
  <class name="Category" table="Categories" lazy="false">

    <id name="Id" columnId="Id" unsaved-value="0">
      <generator class="native" />
    </id>

    <property name="Name">
      <column name="Name" data-type="varchar(50)" not-null="true" />
    </property>

  </class>
</hibernate-mapping>

and the Category table schema is

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Categories](
    [Id] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
    [Name] [varchar](50) NOT NULL,
 CONSTRAINT [PK_Category] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED 
(
    [Id] ASC
)
) ON [PRIMARY]

The problem is that the program compiles and runs well but does not return any category.

The code

var lst = (List<Category>)criterion.List<Category>();

returns 0 items (verified in debugger).

Is there any problem in my configuration or Mapping files?

Comment if additional info is required.

Thanks.

Answer 1

If no mappings are defined, nhibernate will simply fail silently and return an empty list if you query a list of entities.

I guess you do not copy over the mapping files to your bin directory. Mark the mapping files to be copied (via properties).

Answer 2

I changed the Build Action Property of the hbm mapping file to Embedded Resource, then I can get the data.

(It's same way as the OP's comment, but I post it as an answer to be easier noticed.)