Getting Started with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 2012

Awesome! This morning we released Visual Studio 2012 which has a ton of new LightSwitch enhancements like the ability to access data from any OData source as well as create OData services, a new theme, and a whole lot more. For a good rollup of content to get you up to speed on all our new features see my post:

New Features Explained – LightSwitch in Visual Studio 2012

Also now that LightSwitch is a core part of the Visual Studio product line, we wanted to also align the LightSwitch and Visual Studio web sites including a new integrated Developer Center and User Voice sites. The Developer Center is still your one-stop-shop for learning all about Visual Studio and building business applications with LightSwitch. From here you can explore LightSwitch Architecture, watch the How Do I videos, build and install extensions, download samples and a whole lot more.

LightSwitch on the Visual Studio Developer Center —> https://msdn.com/lightswitch

I’ve also been busy preparing some special treats for you to help you get started learning all about LightSwitch development. If you’re completely new to LightSwitch or even software development itself, get started with this beginning LightSwitch article series and samples.

Get Started Building LightSwitch Apps with Visual Studio 2012

• Part 1: What’s in a Table? Describing Your Data
• Part 2: Feel the Love. Defining Data Relationships
• Part 3: Screen Templates, Which One Do I Choose?
• Part 4: Too much information! Sorting and Filtering Data with Queries
• Part 5: May I? Controlling Access with User Permissions
• Part 6: Go beyond the box. Customizing LightSwitch Apps with Extensions
• Download the Competed Sample App

Also if you want a super-quick way to get an application started, check out the LightSwitch starter kits for Visual Studio 2012. There’s currently six available for you to choose from and are full working applications you can use.

New LightSwitch Starter Kits for Visual Studio 2012

You can also use these right from within Visual Studio 2012. File –> New Project then select the “Online” node. Under Templates –> Other, select LightSwitch and you will see all of them listed there.

More on the way!

I’ll be releasing more How Do I videos in the coming weeks and some of the team members have planned on some great content to roll out on the LightSwitch Team blog very soon so stay tuned for a whole lot more. Thanks to everyone in this amazing LightSwitch developer community who helped make LightSwitch in Visual Studio 2012 the very best it could be!

Enjoy!

Comments

• Anonymous
  August 16, 2012
  Thanks that's very nice!

• Anonymous
  August 19, 2012
  Thanks for this. A good update for this blog blogs.msdn.com/.../beginning-lightswitch-getting-started.aspx

• Anonymous
  August 24, 2012
  Thanks man :D

• Anonymous
  November 24, 2012
  I've been trying to figure out what LightSwitch is. I followed a link (Getting Started with LightSwitch) which led me here. I still don't know what it is. I've seen a lot of details and examples on how to do this or that with it, but isn't there somewhere that gives an overview of what it is and why I would want to use it?

• Anonymous
  November 27, 2012
  I have an existing LS2011 application. I created a duplicate copy of this application and moved it to my VS2012 project file, so essentially I had 2 versions. When I open my application in Vs2012 however, I am getting a TON of errors. Apparently, MSFT didnt include a lot of the data types in the new version.... is there a fix for this or do I have to go through all of the errors one by one? Thanks!

• Anonymous
  January 20, 2013
  Hi folks, does LightSwitch include report designer just like in Visual Foxpro ? thanks.

• Anonymous
  July 30, 2013
  Where are the kits? I can't find them in VS?

• Anonymous
  July 31, 2013
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  May 07, 2014
  Excellent thing! Thank you so much for your post