Subscribing to Object value or associated change - mdriven

Is there some doco on IAutoSubscriptionService.
How do I use using (ESP.GetEcoService().StartSubscribe(subscriber)) to trigger an event when an object changes. That is for any attribute of an object.

The StartSubscribe gives a IDisposable context back and it is typically used like this:
using (theAutoSubscriptionService.StartSubscribe(subscriber))
{
arbitrary c# code accessing model elements
- all access will be added to subscription!
A thing of beauty really!
}
When something later change - the ISubscriber.Receive will fire.
For adhoc usage consider the EventSubscriber class

Related

Loading related objects without Include()

Briefly, I'm loading objects that descend from a base class using a repository defined against the base class. Although my objects are created with the correct descendant classes, any descendant classes that add navigation properties not present in the base class do not have those related objects loaded, and I have no way to explicitly request them.
Here is a simple method in a repository class that loads a given calendar event assuming you know its ID value:
public CalendarEvent GetEvent(int eventId)
{
using (var context = new CalendarEventDbContext(ConnectionString))
{
var result = (from evt in context.CalendarEvents
where eventId.Equals((int)evt.EventId)
select evt).ToList();
return result.ToList()[0];
}
}
CalendarEvent is a base class from which a large number of more specific classes descend. Entity Framework correctly determines the actual class of the calendar event specified by eventId and constructs and returns that derived class. This works perfectly.
Now, however, I have a descendant of CalendarEvent called ReportIssued. This object has a reference to another object called ReportRequest (another descendant of CalendarEvent, although I don't think that's important).
My problem is that when Entity Framework creates an instance of ReportIssued on my behalf I always want it to create and load the related instance of ReportRequested, but because I am creating the event in the context of generic calendar events, although I correctly get back a ReportIssued event, I cannot specify the .Include() to get the related object. I want to do it through this generically-expressed search because I won't necessarily know the type of eventId's event and also I have several other "Get" methods that return collections of CalendarEvent descendants.
I create my mappings using the Fluent API. I guess what I'm looking for is some way to express, in the mapping, that the related object is always wanted or, failing that, some kind of decorator that expresses the same concept.
I find it odd that when saving objects Entity Framework always walks the entire graph whereas it does not do the equivalent when loading objects.

How to access the value of a Property argument from nested activities?

I'm sure there's something I'm missing here, but a lot of Googling hasn't uncovered it for me. The situation is like this:
We created a custom workflow designer that allows end users to build workflow definitions from various custom activities we define (Review, Submit, Notify, etc). These definitions (Xaml) get saved off to a Db and used to create workflow instances for long running processes in our system. The users can set properties on each of them (e.g. Review has a property argument: AllowedRoles). The problem is, I'm not able to pass those properties on to nested activities.
For example:
Review has an internal activity 'WriteStatus' that needs access to the 'AllowedRoles' property on Review. If 'AllowedRoles' is defined as a Property, WriteStatus can't "see" it to assign it's value. I can change it from a Property to an InArgument, but then I'm not able to map values to and from the property in the designer (these properties should be part of the definition, and not associated with any specific context).
Has anyone faced this issue or have advice on how I could approach the problem differently?
Thanks in advance!
Royce
I was able to get around the property vs InOurArgument problem by converting the XAML activities to code. This allowed me to set the properties on activities in code, and then pass them to inner activities inline. There may be a better way, but it's working out well so far.
public sealed class Test : Activity
{
public string Stuff { get; set; } // CLR Property
public Test()
{
Implementation = () => new WriteLine {Text = Stuff};
}
}

Doctrine 2, Need to execute code pre-persist/post-persist

I am using Doctrine 2 entities. We have some entities which have to update related items when they are saved to the database. For example, when a user record is modified, we save it as a new record, with the "inactive" field set to 'false'. However, we have to set the the 'inactive' field for all previous record for that user to 'true'. This is done to keep an audit history. It is a Legacy database, so changing the structure is not an option.
Since Doctrine saves objects by passing them to a persister object (persist::($thisObj)), rather than the object having a save method ($thisObj->save()), we can't just extend a 'save' method from a parent object. The only option I see here is to try to extend the 'persist' object, but that sounds like a goose gaggle, just waiting to happen.
I found some information on events, but do not see how to add them to make events fire a particular function when a particular entity is persisted.
How do I add pre-save/post-save functionality to some of my entities ?
So, you probably already know http://www.doctrine-project.org/docs/orm/2.1/en/reference/events.html right?
You add an annotation that the entity contains callbacks and then create specific functions (which need to be public) on that entity and also annotate them with #PrePersist or #PostPersist or whatever.
The other way is creating an event subscriber, register that one with the doctrine event manager and implement methods called prePersist, postPersist etc. They get passed an EventArguments object which contains the entity relevant for the occurred event.
I know this is a very general answer to your question, but you need to be a bit more specific where your problem lies.
Please dont exend the entity manager and overwrite the persist method, there are way cleaner methods for doing what you need as far as I can tell.
It's actually quite simple to do what you want to do. It does not require dorking with the event manager, or anything complex like that. You use something called "Lifecycle callbacks". These are functions that Doctrine automatically runs during the "lifecycle" of the entity, ie: prePersist, postPersist, preUpdate, postUpdate, etc. You can find the complete list here: http://www.doctrine-project.org/docs/orm/2.0/en/reference/events.html
The process of adding this functionality to your entities is very simple.
In the Annotations section of your entity, include the following tag: "#HasLifecycleCallbacks". This tells Doctrine that it should search the entity for functions to run upon various events
Write a public function in your entity that you would like to fire upon a specific event.
Put an annotation above the function indicating which event it should be used to handle.
For example, look at the following code:
/** #PostPersist */
public function doSPostPersist() {
$this->tester = 'Value changed by post-persist';
}
I have found that sometimes the events simply refuse to fire, and I don't yet know why. But when they do fire, they will fire reliably.
Don't forget to enable Lifecycle Callbacks in your class annotation :
/**
* Report\MainBundle\Entity\Serveur
* #ORM\HasLifecycleCallbacks
*/
class Serveur {

Magento: Accessing models/blocks from a phtml

Hi I have a situation where I need to look up the number of recently viewed products on catalog/product/view.phtml. In the recently viewed 'product_viewed.phtml' file it calls
$_products = $this->getRecentlyViewedProducts()
to get the recently viewed. How would I access this method from within the catalog/product/view.phtml file?
I don't know where this method is. I've tried searching for it but it doesn't seem to exist. When I write click it in Netbeans and click go to declaration it takes me to
class Mage_Reports_Block_Product_Viewed extends Mage_Reports_Block_Product_Abstract
Actually on the class itself. This class only has _toHtml(), getCount(), and getPageSize() methods.
I just need to know whether there are any recently viewed products.
Any help most appreciated!
Billy
If you look into 'Mage_Reports_Block_Product_Viewed', you will notice:
$this->setRecentlyViewedProducts($this->getItemsCollection());
That 'getItemsCollection' method is defined in the abstract class... And you will notice this abstract class will create a model based on $_indexName defined in the (subclassed) block.
If you just want the collection, you can probably get away with:
$_products = Mage::getModel('reports/product_index_viewed')->getCollection();
And then adding whatever you want to the collection:
$_products
->addAttributeToSelect('*')
->setAddedAtOrder();
// optionally add other methods similar to Mage_Reports_Block_Product_Abstract::getItemsCollection
Another approach that might be more suited would be to create the original block:
$productViewedBlock = $this->getLayout()->createBlock('reports/product_viewed');
On which you can simply call whatever you want:
$_collection = $productViewedBlock->getItemsCollection();
$_count = $productViewedBlock->getCount();
The getRecentlyViewedProducts function is a magical getter that gets the data that was set with setRecentlyViewedProducts in app/code/core/Mage/Reports/Block/Product/Viewed.php (which builds it using app/code/core/Mage/Reports/Block/Product/Abstract.php's function _getRecentProductsCollection).
This is complicated stuff that you don't want to reproduce; its better, IMO to make your own Block that extends Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_Abstract that will give you access to the same functionality, and drop your new block into the page you're working on.

Entity Framework: Cancel a property change if no change in value

When setting a property on an entity object, it is saving the value to the database even if the value is exactly the same as it was before. Is there anyway to prevent this?
Example:
If I load a Movie object and the Title is "A", if I set the Title to "A" again and SaveChanges() I was hoping that I wouldn't see the UPDATE statement in SqlProfiler but I am. Is there anyway to stop this?
Yes, you can change this. Doing so isn't trivial, however, in the current version of the Entity Framework. It will become easier in the future.
The reason you're seeing this behavior is because of the default code generation for the entity model. Here is a representative example:
public global::System.Guid Id
{
get
{
return this._Id;
}
set
{
// always!
this.OnIdChanging(value);
this.ReportPropertyChanging("Id");
this._Id = global::System.Data.Objects.DataClasses
.StructuralObject.SetValidValue(value);
this.ReportPropertyChanged("Id");
this.OnIdChanged();
}
}
private global::System.Guid _Id;
partial void OnIdChanging(global::System.Guid value);
partial void OnIdChanged();
This default code generation is reasonable, because the Entity Framework doesn't know the semantics of how you intend to use the values. The types in the property may or may not be comparable, and even if they are, the framework can't know how you intend to use reference equality versus value equality in all cases. For certain value types like decimal, it's pretty clear, but in a general sense it's not obvious.
You, on the other hand, know your code, and can customize this some. The trouble is that this is generated code, so you can't just go in and edit it. You need to either take over the code generation, or make it unnecessary. So let's look at the three options.
Take over the code generation
The essential approach here is to create a T4 template which does the code behind, and that the default code generation from the Entity Framework. Here is one example. One advantage of this approach is that the Entity Framework will be moving to T4 generation in the next version, so your template will probably work well in future versions.
Eliminate code generation
The second approach would be to eliminate cogeneration altogether, and do your change tracking support manually, via IPOCO. Instead of changing how the code is generated, with this approach you don't do any code generation at all, and instead provide change tracking support to the Entity Framework by implementing several interfaces. See the linked post for more detail.
Wait
Another option is to live with the Entity Framework the way it is for the time being, and wait until the next release to get the behavior you desire. The next version of the Entity Framework will use T4 by default, so customizing the code generation will be very easy.
According to MSDN:
The state of an object is changed from
Unchanged to Modified whenever a
property setter is called. This occurs
even when the value being set is the
same as the current value. After the
AcceptAllChanges method is called, the
state is returned to Unchanged. By
default, AcceptAllChanges is called
during the SaveChanges operation.
Looks like you'll want to check the value of properties on your Entity objects before you update to prevent the UPDATE statement.
At a generic level, if your entities are implementing INotifyPropertyChanged, you don't want the PropertyChanged event firing if the value is the same. So each property looks like this :-
public decimal Value
{
get
{
return _value;
}
set
{
if (_value != value)
{
_value = value;
if (_propertyChanged != null) _propertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs("Value"));
}
}
}
Hope that's relevant to Entity Framework.
One thing you can do is just wrap the property yourself using a partial class file, and then use your property instead of the first one:
public sealed partial class MyEFType {
public string MyWrappedProperty {
get {
return MyProperty;
}
set {
if (value == MyProperty)
return;
MyProperty = value;
}
}
}
It wouldn't be very practical to do this to every property, but if you have a need to detect that a particular property has actually changed and not just been written to, something like this could work.