Im using custom editor in Spring MVC to map string valuest to my domain objects. Simple case: User object refers to Company (User.company -> Company). In User form I register data binder:
protected void initBinder(WebDataBinder binder) throws Exception {
binder.registerCustomEditor(Company.class, new CompanyEditor(appService));
}
Editor is defined as folows:
class CompanyEditor extends PropertyEditorSupport {
private AppService appService;
public CompanyEditor(AppService appService) {
this.appService = appService;
}
public void setAsText(String text) {
Company company = appService.getCompany(text);
setValue(company);
}
public String getAsText() {
Company company = (Company) this.getValue();
if (company != null)
return company.getId();
return null;
}
}
When I use dropdown in my form
<form:select path="company">
<form:options items="${companies}" itemLabel="name" itemValue="id"/>
</form:select>
I experience severe performance problems because (to check if company is selected, I suppose) fires setAsText and getAsText for each option, which makes it to run a SQL query for each company.
I thought that setAsText is used when I commit form to make application know how to translate compnany id to Company (persisted) object. Why should it fire it in dropdowns. Any ideas how to fix it?
If your form backing object is stored as session attribute(i.e. you have something like #SessionAttributes("command") in your controller), so you can try to modify your setAsText(String text) method
public void setAsText(String text) {
Company currentCompany = (Company) this.getValue();
if ((currentCompany != null) && (currentCompany.getId().equals(text)))
return;
Company company = appService.getCompany(text);
setValue(company);
}
but I think that Spring 3.1 #Cacheable abstraction was introduced exactly for the such kind of things and is preferable
see examples in documentation
#Cacheable("books")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn) {...}
P.S. Consider using new Converter SPI instead of Property Editors.
In general, it's possible to implement a generic converter for your look-up entities, so it will automatically convert entities from text using id if they have some specific attribute, for example, in one of my projects all #Entity types are being automatically converted using a global ConditionalGenericConverter implementation, so I neither register custom property editors during binding nor implement specific converters for types which are simple #Entity classes with #Id annotated primary keys.
Also it's very convenient when Spring automatically converts textual object ids to the actual entities when they are specified as #RequestParam annotated controller method arguments.
Related
in this tutorial about the EventCloud example app:
https://aspnetboilerplate.com/Pages/Documents/Articles/Developing-MultiTenant-SaaS-ASP.NET-CORE-Angular/index.html
the text states: the creation of a new entity must be done using the static method "Create" in the "Event" class (not using "new Entity(....)")
1) so my first question is: which design pattern is this? Factory? Builder? other?
[Table("AppEvents")]
public class Event : FullAuditedEntity<Guid>, IMustHaveTenant
{
......
....
...
/// <summary>
/// We don't make constructor public and forcing to create events using <see cref="Create"/> method.
/// But constructor can not be private since it's used by EntityFramework.
/// Thats why we did it protected.
/// </summary>
protected Event()
{
}
public static Event Create(int tenantId, string title, DateTime date, string description = null, int maxRegistrationCount = 0)
{
var #event = new Event
{
Id = Guid.NewGuid(),
TenantId = tenantId,
Title = title,
Description = description,
MaxRegistrationCount = maxRegistrationCount
};
#event.SetDate(date);
#event.Registrations = new Collection<EventRegistration>();
return #event;
}
....
...
2) the second question:
than the article says...
Event Manager .... All Event operations should be executed using this class... (EventManager)
ok, the CreateAsync method call the repository insert method, is the static "Event.Create" internaly called from the repository insert method? if yes, could you indicate me the point in the abp source code?
or is it an internal matter of EntityFramework?
public class EventManager : IEventManager
{
......
....
..
public async Task CreateAsync(Event #event)
{
await _eventRepository.InsertAsync(#event);
}
Here are my answers:
1-) Event is being created with a static factory method. There are 2 ways to create an entity in Domain Driven Design.
Creating with static factory methods: It's a convenient way of creating business entities. And this method is being used in EventCloud. The only downside of this method is it's static! If your entity is holding state it's not good for testability. But there are 3 advantages of this approach;
They have names: for example Event.CreatePublicEvent(), Create.PrivateEvent()
They can cache: You can cache them in a private static HashSet or Dictionary.
They can subtype.
Creating with a constructor: If you have only one constructor then creating an object through its public constructor is the most convenient approach in Domain Driven Design. As long as you make parameterless constructor protected or private. Besides, an entity should be responsible for its own data integrity and validity so you have to set all business related public properties as private setter and you should allow them to change through public methods.
Further information, see https://www.yegor256.com/2017/11/14/static-factory-methods.html
2-) EventManager is a domain service that is used for business logic. And Event.Create() is being used in the EventAppService class. Click here to see where exactly is being executed. Even Event.Create() method consists of a single line of code but it's open for extension.
I hope that will be useful ;)
Happy coding...
DISCLAIMER: Since we are all familiar with it, i will be using contoso university design to explain my question. Also, i am using EF core and .net core 2.0 on a mvc code first design.
I am developing a very generic RESTful API that works on any model. It has one method for each of create, read, update and delete operation in only one controller, the route of this is
[Route("/api/{resource}")]
Resource is the entity that the client wants to work with, for example if someone wants to get all Courses using the api he has to do a GET request on http://www.example.com/api/course/ or http://www.example.com/api/course/2 to get one by id and the following code will do the job.
[HttpGet("{id:int:min(1)?}")]
public IActionResult Read([FromRoute] string resource, [FromRoute] int? id)
{
//find resourse in models
IEntityType entityType = _context.Model
.GetEntityTypes()
.FirstOrDefault(x => x.Name.EndsWith($".{resource}", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase));
if (entityType == null) return NotFound(resource);
Type type = entityType.ClrType;
if (id == null)//select all from table
{
var entityRows = context.GetType().GetMethod("Set").MakeGenericMethod(type).Invoke(context, null);
if (entityRows == null)
return NoContent();
//TODO: load references (1)
return Ok(entityRows);
}
else //select by id
{
var entityRow = _context.Find(type, id);
if (entityRow == null)
return NoContent();
//TODO: load references (2)
return Ok(entityRows);
}
}
This small piece of code will do the magic with one small exception, intermediate collections will not be loaded. Given our example, the fetched course or courses will have no info for CourseInstructor (the intermediate collection in between Course and Person). I am trying to find a way to Eager load the navigation properties only if it is a collection; or by any other condition that will ensure that only many-to-many relationships are loaded.
For //TODO: load reference (2) i could use
_context.Entry(entityRow).Collection("CourseInsructor").Load();
On runtime if i could find all the navigation properties (filtered by spoken condition) and foreach of them i did Load(), i should get the desired result. My problem is when i get all (when id is null) the entityRows is type 'InternalDbSet' which is an unknown model.
So for the two TODOs i need some help on doing the following steps
1: find navigation properties of many-to-many relationships only
2: load them
Any suggestions?
In general, this seems like a very bad idea to me. While the CRUD stuff is going to be identical for most resources, there will be variances (as you've now run into). There's also something to be said for having a self-documenting API: with individual controllers, you know which resources can be accessed by nature of having a controller associated with that resource. With they way you're doing it, it's a complete black box. This also will of course effect any sort of actual generated API documentation. For example, if you were to include Swagger in your project, it would not be able to determine what you're doing here. Finally, you're now having to use reflection for everything, which will effect your performance.
What I would suggest instead is creating a base abstract controller and then creating a controller for each unique resource that inherits from that, for example:
public abstract class BaseController<TEntity> : Controller
where TEntity : class, new()
{
protected readonly MyContext _context;
public BaseController(MyContext context)
{
_context = context ?? throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(context));
}
...
[HttpGet("create")]
public IActionResult Create()
{
var model = new TEntity();
return View(model);
}
[HttpPost("create")]
public async Task<IActionResult> Create(TEntity model)
{
if (ModelState.IsValid)
{
_context.Add(model);
await _context.SaveChangesAsync();
return RedirectToAction("Index");
}
return View(model);
}
...
}
I just wanted to give a quick example, but you'd build out all the rest of the CRUD methods in the same fashion, generically using TEntity. Then, for each actual resource, you simply do:
public class WidgetController : BaseController<Widget>
{
public WidgetController(MyContext context)
: base(context)
{
}
}
No duplication of code, but you've now got an actual real controller backing the resource, aiding both the innate and possibly explicit documentation of your API. And, no reflection anywhere.
Then, to solve problems like what you have here, you can add hooks to your base controller: essentially just virtual methods that are utilized in your base controller's CRUD actions and do nothing or just default things. However, you can then override these in your derived controllers to stub in additional functionality. For example, you can add something like:
public virtual IQueryable<TEntity> GetQueryable()
=> _context.Set<TEntity>();
Then, in your derived controller, you can do something like:
public class CourseController : BaseController<Course>
{
...
public override IQueryable<Course> GetQueryable()
=> base.GetQueryable().Include(x => x.CourseInstructors).ThenInclude(x => x.Instructor);
So, for example, you'd make your BaseController.Index action, perhaps, utilize GetQueryable() to get the list of entities to display. Simply by overriding this on the derived class, you can alter what happens based on the context of a particular type of resource.
I have a GridView which needs to page and sort data which comes from a collection of Customer objects.
Unfortunately my customer information is stored separately...the customer information is stored as a Customer ID in my database, and the Customer Name in a separate DLL.
I retrieve the ID from the database using Entity Framework, and the name from the external DLL through a partial class.
I am getting the ID from my database as follows:
public class DAL
{
public IEnumberable<Customer> GetCustomers()
{
Entities entities = new Entities();
var customers = (from c in entities.Customers
select c);
//CustomerID is a field in the Customer table
return customers;
}
}
I have then created a partial class, which retrieves the data from the DLL:
public partial class Customer
{
private string name;
public string Name
{
if (name==null)
{
DLLManager manager = new DLLManager();
name= manager.GetName(CustomerID);
}
return name;
}
}
In my business layer I can then call something like:
public class BLL
{
public List<Customer> GetCustomers()
{
DAL customersDAL = new DAL();
var customers = customersDAL.GetCustomers();
return customers.ToList();
}
}
...and this gives me a collection of Customers with ID and Name.
My problem is that I wish to page and sort by Customer Name, which as we have seen, is populated from a DLL. This means I cannot page and sort in the database, which is my preferred solution. I am therefore assuming I am going to have to call of the database records into memory, and perform paging and sorting at this level.
My question is - what is the best way to page and sort an in-memory collection. Can I do this with my List in the BLL above? I assume the List would then need to be stored in Session.
I am interested in people's thoughts on the best way to page and sort a field that does not come from the database in an Entity Framework scenario.
Very grateful for any help!
Mart
p.s. This question is a development of this post here:
GridView sorting and paging Entity Framework with calculated field
The only difference here is that I am now using a partial class, and hopefully this post is a little clearer.
Yes, you can page and sort within you list in the BLL. As long as its fast enough I wouldn't care to much about caching something in the session. An other way would be to extend your database with the data from you DLL.
I posted this question slightly differently on a different forum, and got the following solution.
Basically I return the data as an IQueryable from the DAL which has already been forced to execute using ToList(). This means that I am running my sorting and paging against an object which consists of data from the DB and DLL. This also allows Scott's dynamic sorting to take place.
The BLL then performs OrderBy(), Skip() and Take() on the returned IQueryable and then returns this as a List to my GridView.
It works fine, but I am slightly bemused that we are perfoming IQueryable to List to IQueryable to List again.
1) Get the results from the database as an IQueryable:
public class DAL
{
public IQueryable<Customer> GetCustomers()
{
Entities entities = new Entities();
var customers = (from c in entities.Customers
select c);
//CustomerID is a field in the Customer table
return customers.ToList().AsQueryable();
}
}
2) Pull the results into my business layer:
public class BLL
{
public List<Customer> GetCustomers(intint startRowIndex, int maximumRows, string sortParameter)
{
DAL customersDAL = new DAL();
return customersDAL.GetCustomers().OrderBy(sortParameter).Skip(startRowIndex).Take(maximumRows).ToList();
}
}
Here is the link to the other thread.
http://forums.asp.net/p/1976270/5655727.aspx?Paging+and+sorting+Entity+Framework+on+a+field+from+Partial+Class
Hope this helps others!
This is more like a conceptual question. When to use Model Binding (in ASP.NET MVC Framework) and when to inject objects using IoC (lets say Autofac here) ?
One specific scenario is like lets say, I have the following action method
public ActionResult EditProfile(string UserId)
{
// get user object from repository using the the UserId
// edit profile
// save changes
// return feedback
}
In the above scenario, is it possible to inject a user object to action method such that it automatically gets the user object using the UserId ? The resulting signature being:
public ActionResult EditProfile(UserProfile userObj) //userObj injected *somehow* to automatically retreive the object from repo using UserId ?
Sorry if it all doesn't makes sense. It`s my first time using IoC.
EDIT:
This is the way to do it > http://buildstarted.com/2010/09/12/custom-model-binders-in-mvc-3-with-imodelbinder/
You can do what you need using a custom action filter. By overriding OnActionExecuting, we have access to the route data, and the action parameters of the action that will be executed. Given:
public class BindUserProfileAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
{
public override OnActionExecuting(FilterContext filterContext)
{
string id = (string)filterContext.RouteData.Values["UserId"];
var model = new UserProfile { Id = id };
filtextContext.ActionParameters["userObj"] = model;
}
}
This attribute allows us to create the parameters that will be passed into the action, so we can load the user object at this point.
[BindUserProfile]
public ActionResult EditProfile(UserProfile userObj)
{
}
You'll probably need to get specific with your routes:
routes.MapRoute(
"EditProfile",
"Account/EditProfile/{UserId}",
new { controller = "Account", action = "EditProfile" });
In MVC3 we get access to the new IDepedencyResolver interface, which allows us to perform IoC/SL using whatever IoC container or service locator we want, so we can push a service like a IUserProfileFactory into your filter, to then be able to create your UserProfile instance.
Hope that helps?
Model binding is used for your data. Dependency injection is used for your business logic.
I have a class Address Generated by entity Framework.
I Have an propertie AddressID in this class.
I Would like to be able to add some treatement for this prop in the set process.
EX :
public partial class Address
{
public bool _AddressID;
public bool AddressID{get return AddressID;}
set{
if(value == -1) _AddressID = null;
}
}
Thanks
Of course you can't redefine your AddressID in order to put your custom logic in its setter, as you'll get compiler error:
The type Address already contains a definition for 'AddressID'
But no worries, if you take a look at the EF generated code for your EntityObject (let's assume its name is Address) you'll see that every scalar property of generated Address class has its own version of OnPropertyChanging and OnPropertyChanged method. For example, OnAddressIDChanging and OnAddressIDChanged in this case.
As you can see below, there is no default implementation for these two methods, only a declaration. This perfectly provides you the opportunity to execute custom logic
as the property is about to change (PropertyChanging) as well as just after the property
value has changed (PropertyChanged).
// From the designer code for Address class:
partial void OnAddressIDChanging(global::System.Int32 value);
partial void OnAddressIDChanged();
This is how your Entity Model designer code already is look like (hypotetically):
public global::System.Int32 AddressID {
get {
return _AddressID;
}
set {
if (_AddressID != value) {
// OnPropertyChanging method get called here:
OnAddressIDChanging(value);
ReportPropertyChanging("AddressID");
_AddressID = StructuralObject.SetValidValue(value);
ReportPropertyChanged("AddressID");
// OnPropertyChanged get called here:
OnAddressIDChanged();
}
}
}
So all you need to do in order to hook up your custom code is:
public partial class Address {
partial void OnAddressIDChanged() {
if(AddressID == -1) {
AddressID = 0;
}
}
}
By the way, about other posted answers - with all due respect to them - if you want this solution for a production application then you cannot use "Code First" since it merely is a CTP as for now and will be part of the next release for EF, so it cannot be an option.
About customizing default code generation, while this is indeed possible since in VS 2010, Entity Framework itself also uses T4 for designer code generation and we can take advantage of it by changing the T4, But it is an option only if you want to fundamentally change how the entity classes are generated in general and you cannot use it for customizing a setter logic for a specific entity.
Code First in EF4 is an option - it allows you to fully control all of the code. However, another option is to customize the EF4 T4 templates that ship with EF4. If you have certain patterns in your code that you consistently use, this would be a good approach. You can read more about how to customize the templates here: Customizing Entity Classes in VS2010