A simple diary CRUD app built with ASP.NET Core MVC and Entity Framework Core. Create, read, update, and delete personal diary entries with a web interface.

• Add and edit diary entries
• View all entries
• Delete embarrassing entries 😅
• Seeded with sample data
• SQL Server database with EF Core
• Clean MVC architecture

These instructions will get you a local copy of the project up and running.

• Visual Studio 2022+ (with ASP.NET and web development workload)
• .NET SDK 6 or later
• SQL Server Express or LocalDB (comes with Visual Studio)

1. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/TDJR007/DiaryApp.git
cd DiaryApp

2. Update your connection string

Open appsettings.json and update the DefaultConnection:

"ConnectionStrings": {
  "DefaultConnection": "Server=YOUR_SERVER;Database=Diary;Trusted_Connection=True;TrustServerCertificate=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=true"
}

💡 Tip: Use Server=(localdb)\MSSQLLocalDB for LocalDB
Or Server=localhost\SQLEXPRESS for SQL Express

You can get the hostname by running hostname in command prompt.

1. Open Visual Studio

   Launch Visual Studio 2022 or later.

2. Open the Solution File

   Click on File → Open → Project/Solution
   Navigate to the folder where you cloned the repo, and open the Diary.sln file.

   🧠 The .sln (solution) file links all your project files, so always open this.

To create the database and seed it with initial data:

1. Go to Tools → NuGet Package Manager → Package Manager Console
2. Run this:

Update-Database

You should see a new database created in SQL Server.

Click the green Start button in Visual Studio, or press F5.
Navigate to /DiaryEntries to start journaling!

Pull requests welcome! If you spot a bug or want to add features like user authentication or Markdown support, open an issue or fork and go wild 🎉

MIT — use this for anything!