How to decorate a class item to be an index and get the same as using ensureIndex? - mongodb

Question

I'd like to define in class declaration which items are index, something like:
public class MyClass {
public int SomeNum { get; set; }
[THISISANINDEX]
public string SomeProperty { get; set; }
}
so to have the same effect as ensureIndex("SomeProperty")
Is this possible?

Answer 1

I think this is a nice idea, but you have to do this yourself, there's no built-in support for it. If you have an access layer you can do it in there. You'd need an attribute class, something like this;
public enum IndexConstraints
{
Normal = 0x00000001, // Ascending, non-indexed
Descending = 0x00000010,
Unique = 0x00000100,
Sparse = 0x00001000, // allows nulls in the indexed fields
}
// Applied to a member
[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Property | AttributeTargets.Field)]
public class EnsureIndexAttribute : EnsureIndexes
{
public EnsureIndex(IndexConstraints ic = IndexConstraints.Normal) : base(ic) { }
}
// Applied to a class
[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Class)]
public class EnsureIndexesAttribute : Attribute
{
public bool Descending { get; private set; }
public bool Unique { get; private set; }
public bool Sparse { get; private set; }
public string[] Keys { get; private set; }
public EnsureIndexes(params string[] keys) : this(IndexConstraints.Normal, keys) {}
public EnsureIndexes(IndexConstraints ic, params string[] keys)
{
this.Descending = ((ic & IndexConstraints.Descending) != 0);
this.Unique = ((ic & IndexConstraints.Unique) != 0); ;
this.Sparse = ((ic & IndexConstraints.Sparse) != 0); ;
this.Keys = keys;
}
}//class EnsureIndexes
You could then apply attributes at either the class or member level as follows. I found that adding at member level was less likely to get out of sync with the schema compared to adding at the class level. You need to make sure of course that you get the actual element name as opposed to the C# member name;
[CollectionName("People")]
//[EnsureIndexes("k")]// doing it here would allow for multi-key configs
public class Person
{
[BsonElement("k")] // name mapping in the DB schema
[BsonIgnoreIfNull]
[EnsureIndex(IndexConstraints.Unique|IndexConstraints.Sparse)] // name is implicit here
public string userId{ get; protected set; }
// other properties go here
}
and then in your DB access implementation (or repository), you need something like this;
private void AssureIndexesNotInlinable()
{
// We can only index a collection if there's at least one element, otherwise it does nothing
if (this.collection.Count() > 0)
{
// Check for EnsureIndex Attribute
var theClass = typeof(T);
// Walk the members of the class to see if there are any directly attached index directives
foreach (var m in theClass.GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.FlattenHierarchy))
{
List<string> elementNameOverride = new List<string>(1);
EnsureIndexes indexAttr = null;
// For each members attribs
foreach (Attribute attr in m.GetCustomAttributes())
{
if (attr.GetType() == typeof(EnsureIndex))
indexAttr = (EnsureIndex)attr;
if (attr.GetType() == typeof(RepoElementAttribute))
elementNameOverride.Add(((RepoElementAttribute)attr).ElementName);
if ((indexAttr != null) && (elementNameOverride.Count != 0))
break;
}
// Index
if (indexAttr != null)
{
if (elementNameOverride.Count() > 0)
EnsureIndexesAsDeclared(indexAttr, elementNameOverride);
else
EnsureIndexesAsDeclared(indexAttr);
}
}
// Walk the atributes on the class itself. WARNING: We don't validate the member names here, we just create the indexes
// so if you create a unique index and don't have a field to match you'll get an exception as you try to add the second
// item with a null value on that key
foreach (Attribute attr in theClass.GetCustomAttributes(true))
{
if (attr.GetType() == typeof(EnsureIndexes))
EnsureIndexesAsDeclared((EnsureIndexes)attr);
}//foreach
}//if this.collection.count
}//AssureIndexesNotInlinable()
EnsureIndexes then looks like this;
private void EnsureIndexesAsDeclared(EnsureIndexes attr, List<string> indexFields = null)
{
var eia = attr as EnsureIndexes;
if (indexFields == null)
indexFields = eia.Keys.ToList();
// use driver specific methods to actually create this index on the collection
var db = GetRepositoryManager(); // if you have a repository or some other method of your own
db.EnsureIndexes(indexFields, attr.Descending, attr.Unique, attr.Sparse);
}//EnsureIndexes()
Note that you'll place this after each and every update because if you forget somewhere your indexes may not get created. It's important to ensure therefore that you optimise the call so that it returns quickly if there's no indexing to do before going through all that reflection code. Ideally, you'd do this just once, or at the very least, once per application startup. So one way would be to use a static flag to track whether you've already done so, and you'd need additional lock protection around that, but over-simplistically, it looks something like this;
void AssureIndexes()
{
if (_requiresIndexing)
AssureIndexesInit();
}
So that's the method you'll want in each and every DB update you make, which, if you're lucky would get inlined by the JIT optimizer as well.

Answer 2

See below for a naive implementation which could do with some brains to take the indexing advice from the MongoDb documentation into consideration. Creating indexes based on queries used within the application instead of adding custom attributes to properties might be another option.
using System;
using System.Reflection;
using MongoDB.Bson.Serialization.Attributes;
using MongoDB.Driver;
using NUnit.Framework;
using SharpTestsEx;
namespace Mongeek
{
[TestFixture]
class TestDecorateToEnsureIndex
{
[Test]
public void ShouldIndexPropertyWithEnsureIndexAttribute()
{
var server = MongoServer.Create("mongodb://localhost");
var db = server.GetDatabase("IndexTest");
var boatCollection = db.GetCollection<Boat>("Boats");
boatCollection.DropAllIndexes();
var indexer = new Indexer();
indexer.EnsureThat(boatCollection).HasIndexesNeededBy<Boat>();
boatCollection.IndexExists(new[] { "Name" }).Should().Be.True();
}
}
internal class Indexer
{
private MongoCollection _mongoCollection;
public Indexer EnsureThat(MongoCollection mongoCollection)
{
_mongoCollection = mongoCollection;
return this;
}
public Indexer HasIndexesNeededBy<T>()
{
Type t = typeof (T);
foreach(PropertyInfo prop in t.GetProperties() )
{
if (Attribute.IsDefined(prop, typeof (EnsureIndexAttribute)))
{
_mongoCollection.EnsureIndex(new[] {prop.Name});
}
}
return this;
}
}
internal class Boat
{
public Boat(Guid id)
{
Id = id;
}
[BsonId]
public Guid Id { get; private set; }
public int Length { get; set; }
[EnsureIndex]
public string Name { get; set; }
}
internal class EnsureIndexAttribute : Attribute
{
}
}