In the "Admin" area of my application, an object must be available in ViewData on every page (for display in the Master template). I have already inherited from Controller, so I cannot make a simple base class that handles it. What is a good solution of doing this when not using inheritance? An ActionFilter seems interesting but I don't want to put it on every controller in the Admin area. I'm considering the following:
Custom ControllerFactory that detects Area as well
Application_BeginRequest(), though I have no knowledge on executing controller then.
Maybe you have a better solution?
In this case I would create a separate action that executes a partial view that shows the data you need. In my opinion this is the most clean solution for this kind of problem and it's easily testable and reusable.
i have a dropdown on my masterpage. you dont need viewdata for it. i did it like this
code on masterpage:
<%= Html.DropDownList("schselectr", MVC2_NASTEST.MvcApplication.masterSchooljaarList())%>
in Global.asax.cs
public static SelectList masterSchooljaarList() {
NASDataContext _db = new NASDataContext();
List<Schooljaar> newlist = _db.Schooljaars.ToList();
return new SelectList(_db.Schooljaars.ToList(), "Sch_Schooljaar", "Sch_Schooljaar");
}
so simply, it calls the method, which returns the data i need, every time you load the page. easy, clean, effective.
Related
I have the current scenario:
I'm using EF6 Code first, and have created a data-model something like this:
public class MainObject{
..some properties
IList<SubObject> SubObjects{get;set;}
}
public class SubObject{
..some properties
IList<SubSubObject> SubSubObjects{get;set;}
}
public class SubObject{
..some properties
IList<SubObject> SubObjects{get;set;}
}
So basically I have a main object, that has 0 to many subobjects, and there is a many to many relationship between the subobject and the subsubobjects.
I am creating a MVC application, so my normal program flow is that the user request a page that basically uses a MainObject as it's data model. Then the user interacts with the page and changes, adds or removes subobjects and subsubobjects as he wishes, and then clicks save. On save, the objectgraph is sent back to the controller and it looks correct according to the changes done by the user on the client side. Now my problem is the following:
How to store this back into the database in a good fashion.
I need to attach my object back into the context, but I have no clue which objects are new, modified or deleted.
I have written some code that partially works now, but it's getting so ugly that I really don't want to go down that path. Would it be possible somehow to fetch the relevant object graph from the database, and have EF compare the two graphs toward eachother, and then save the relevant changes to the database?
Any help to make this smoother would be greatly appreciated.
I ended up using GraphDiff to solve this for me, and it works just great! This really should be built into EF, but untill it does, this is a great substitute.
To solve the example given in my question above, this will make sure that the detached graph gets saved properly (given I have a MainObject I want to save called main):
context.UpdateGraph(main, map =>map
.AssociatedCollection( m => m.SubObjects, with => with
.AssociatedCollection( s => s.SubSubObjects)
)
);
context.SaveChanges();
What is the best practise to update Activity state on Place change? Imagine you have an activity with view that displays list of categories and list of items in the category. If different category is selected then app goes to new place with category ID. I want then to only refresh items and not to create new activity that also re-reads category list.
My current approach is like this:
public class AppActivityMapper implements ActivityMapper {
private ItemListActivity itemListActivity;
...
public Activity getActivity(final Place place) {
final Activity activity;
if (place instanceof ItemListPlace) {
if (itemListActivity == null) {
itemListActivity = new ItemListActivity((ItemListPlace) place, clientFactory);
} else {
itemListActivity.refresh((ItemListPlace) place);
}
activity = itemListActivity;
} else {
itemListActivity = null;
}
...
return activity;
}
...
Alternatives are:
listen to PlaceChangeEvents from within the activity (you can then use a FilteredActivityMapper and CachingActivityMapper for the caching of the activity in your ActivityMapper, so that it's reduced to only create a new activity when asked). †
have some component listen to PlaceChangeEvents and translate them to business-oriented events, the activity then listens to those events rather than PlaceChangeEvents, otherwise the same as above.
decouple the activity from the "screen", make the "screen" a singleton with a reset() method and call that method from the activity's start (possibly passing the category ID as an argument in this case). The "screen" being a singleton could then make sure to load the categories list only once.
in your case, you could also simply put the categories list in a shared cache, so that you don't have to reuse your activity by can create a new one, the categories list will be retrieved once and put in the cache, subsequent activity instances will just use what's in the cache. This is similar to the above, but simpler, and the cache could be used by other parts of the application.
I'd personally rather go with your approach though (with a small exception, see below), as it's the simplest/easiest. Decoupling the activity from the "screen" is also an option; the GWT Team started exploring this approach in the Expenses sample (decoupling the activity responsibility from the presenter responsibility with using MVP) without ever finishing it unfortunately.
Other than that, I don't think any best practice has really emerged for now.
†. I don't like coupling my activities with the places they're used with (I don't quite like the coupling for the goTo calls either, but haven't yet found a clean and simple alternative), so I'd rather not go with this option; and similarly, I'd not pass the place to the activity constructor and refresh method like you did, but rather extract the information out of the place and pass it to the activity (e.g. in your case, only give the category ID to the activity, not the ItemListPlace instance; I would then simply call setCategory in all cases, and not even pass the category ID to the constructor).
In my opinion,
The role of the ActivityMapper is to give you back an Activity from a Place.
The role of the ActivityManager is to start the Activity given back from the ActivityMapper and to stop the current one if different. In your case you would like to "update/refresh" the current Activity.
So I would modify the ActivityMapper so as it will allways give me back the same instance of Activity for a given type of Place. A good way to do so could be to use GIN and use the singleton scope ...in(Singleton.class) to inject your Activity.
If you do that, when changing the url, if the place stays the same (meaning your url has the same word after # and before :) so that the Type of your place stays the same, the ActivityMapper will give you back the same instance of Activity so the ActivityManager will do nothing on the Activity. Check l.126 of ActivityManager
if (currentActivity.equals(nextActivity)) {
return;
}
For me you have 2 options there. The first one, as Thomas said , is to listen to PlaceChangeEvent in your Activity. The new Place you will receive can have new parameters inside based on the new url given and you can "update/refresh" your Activity.
The second one, that I find more in line with the Activity/Place pattern is to modify the ActivityManager so that it calls an update(Place) method on the Activity when the Activity given back by the ActivityMapper is the same that the current Activity.
I haven't tried any of these solutions yet but I will soon ... I might be able to update that post at that time.
You can find more information in this article I wrote on my blog on that topic
Here is a little schema I made to help me understand the pattern, hope it will help :
I would not do any logic in my ActiviyMapper except returning an activity, by creating a new one or giving a previous one (or null). According to me, the mapper doesn't have to know about refresh() or what activities do.
If that, then the logic of 'refresh()' would be given to the activy through the place which holds a token. That token should be holding the information about either what is the state of the request (a new page, reload, an id, etc).
In the activity, first, it asks for the View, the one related to this activity (tip : a singleton given by a 'ClientFactory' is good practice), then it creates a presenter for that view, and bind them together.
Lastly, the activity will use the token from the place to provide any information about state to the presenter. And then, it adds the view in the page.
It's good to know by default, with places and activies, going to the same place doesn't do anything (no reload). But you can take care of it with token and activity-mapper easily.
Hope you'll find an adapted solution for you case. Goodluck.
How can I eliminate to write $object = new Application_Model_Database() in every controller?
For example for an article controller, I have to type $articles = new Application_Model_Articles() for every controller. Should I put it under viewer controller, action helpers, or any other way?
Your question almost sounds like an OOP best practices question as opposed to a Zend Framework specific question. Regardless of whether or not I'm using a framework, and regardless of what framework I choose, I base when and where I create new objects on testability how many times I have to write $object = new My_Random_Object();.
Speaking specifically to the Zend Framework: Objects I'm going to use everywhere, or almost everywhere, get created in Bootstrap.php. These objects generally include a database adapter, logger, view object, and any plugins I might use. To access these across the application, I'll create private properties in the appropriate controllers and assign the objects to those properties in the controller's init() method.
class ExampleController extends Zend_Controller_Action
{
public function init()
{
$bootstrap = $this->getInvokeArg('bootstrap');
$this->_db = $bootstrap->getResource('db');
$this->_log = $bootstrap->getResource('log');
// and so on, and so forth
}
}
Ideally, models, services, daos, etc, will all be relatively tightly grouped by controller and by action. In my experience, and this is speaking generally, if I have the same model or service class showing up across all of the controllers in my application, I have an organization problem. That being said, any model that shows up in only one action gets created in that action. If it's across actions in a controller, it gets created in the init() method and assigned to a property. If it shows up across multiple controllers, it gets created in my Bootstrap.php.
(Ideally, everything gets created in the Bootstrap.php, so you can swap out that bootstrap for testing purposes. Sadly, I don't always do that, and I most often use the principles I outlined above.)
Well do you really need it in every controllers? Because that's pretty much by design. You implement models when you need them. Its not that much code really.
Now if its to be used across actions from a controller you could always:
class MyController extends Zend_Controllers{
$protected $_articleModel;
...
and in your constructor or __init() function initialize it so you can use it in every action thru $this->_articleModel
If you REALLY want it everywhere in your application just initialize it in your bootstrap and store it in the registry.
public function __initModels(){
$articles = new Application_Model_Articles()
Zend_Registry::set('articles', $articles );
}
And access it in your controllers like so:
Zend_Registry::get('articles')->fetchAll();
But then your still writing a couple of characters.
Hope this help!
IF you want to use models in the controllers you must call it..anyway some shortcuts are here
1.You can initialize it in the init section of your controller like
public function init(){
$this->object = new Application_Model_Database();
}
So that the this->object is available in all the actions of that particular controller
2.Use Zend_registry as suggested in the above answer
Another possibility is to use a Dependency Injection container, such as the Symfony DI component. It takes care of instantiating your objects, and you get some additional benefits:
Separation of concerns. You have a component devoted to create your object tree.
Easier testability of the objects.
Last, but not least, the performance benefits given by lazy instantiation (objects are created only when you ask for them). Thus, if some object is not used by the particular controller serving your request, it's not instantiated).
It's a bit more laborious than the above solutions, but much more flexible if you need to maintain and extend your application in the future.
Hope that helps,
If you are using this object to just display data in your view and are using your controller to grab the data and assign it to your view, like so:
//someControllerAction
$object = new Application_Model_Articles();
$object->fetchAll();
//assign to view
$this->view->articles = $object;
You might be better off making a view helper similar to:
//Articles.php put in /application/views/helpers
class Zend_View_Helper_Articles extends Zend_View_Helper_Abstract {
public function Articles() {
$articles = new Application_Model_Articles();
$articles->fetchAll();
//return rowset object
return $articles;
Then in your view (phtml) you could do something like:
//someView.phmtl
<?php $articles = $this->Articles(); ?>
<h1><?php echo $this->escape($articles->title); ?></h1>
<p><?php echo $this->escape($articles->body); ?></p>
building a view helper allows you to bypass the controller completely if you just need to display data from the model. This is a very simple example and can be used with partials and partialLoops.
REF:ZF reference Custom View Helper
ZF partial view helper reference
I'm working with the MVVM pattern + a simple ServiceLocator implementation, now to my problem how am I supposed to setup the services when the views are running in design time?
Iv tried this but it does not seem to work in VS 2010 or some thing, I know it worked on my old computer but on my new it does not. so does any one know a good alternative?
Edit: (On behalf of Merlyn Morgan-Graham)
Well what I'm trying to do is this, I have my view, ViewModel and services now the difference here is that I have 2 implementations of each service one for design time and one for run time.
for a better explanation look here.
If you want to decouple your view from your viewmodel, and your viewmodel from your model/dal (basically, if you want to use MVVM), then your view model and data model shouldn't know anything about design time. Design time only applies to the view.
This article shows a way to define your design time data via XML/XAML, so your code underneath doesn't have to know anything about it:
http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/visual-studio-2010-beta2-sample-data-project-templates/
After Edit: It turns out that you'll still have to use your view model for your existing XAML bindings to work. This will just populate the view model rather than having to create a new data model. I'm not sure, but there might be classes that allow you to use the WPF binding mechanism to take care of this... Views?
Resume Before Edit...:
As far as the solution in the article you linked first, the designer doesn't instantiate anything but your class, and the code it references. That means that assembly attributes won't be instantiated unless your view code somehow directly references them.
If you really want to couple your view models to your views during design time, and make it so that design time services are registered, then you have to place the service registration code in your view class, or a class the view class directly references.
To do that, you could use static constructors of your views to register your design time services. You could also write a static method on some other class (application?) to (conditionally) register the design time services. Then, call that method in the constructor of your views.
Or you could simply register them in the constructor for each of your views.
Basically, what you want to do is possible, but that method linked in the first article isn't. If you read farther in the comments, you'll see that his method is broken.
You may also want to question the idea of hooking your view model to your view during design time, because the MVVM pattern was made to avoid that sort of thing.
You usually don't need to access services at design-time... Typically, you don't even use your real ViewModels at design-time, you use dummy design data, as explained here. If you really need to use your real ViewModels, you can implement dummy versions of your services, and use them instead of the real services :
if (DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode(new DependencyObject()))
{
// Design time
ServiceLocator.Instance.Register<IService1>(new DummyService1());
ServiceLocator.Instance.Register<IService2>(new DummyService2());
}
else
{
// Run time
ServiceLocator.Instance.Register<IService1>(new RealService1());
ServiceLocator.Instance.Register<IService2>(new RealService2());
}
Also I do agree to all who have concerns regarding the use of the service locator at design time, I do believe that this is a valid scenario in some use cases.
This is not a discussion on why/why not, this is simple the way it (almost) worked for me.
There is still a problem which I did not solve yet: this only works for one view at a time.
Create a simple bootstrapper for setting up your IoC of choice. Notice the ISupportInitialize interface.
public class Bootstrapper: ISupportInitialize
{
#region ISupportInitialize Members
public void BeginInit() { }
public void EndInit()
{
if (DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode(new DependencyObject()))
Setup();
}
#endregion
public static void Setup() { SetupServiceLocator(); }
static void SetupServiceLocator()
{
ContainerBuilder builder = new ContainerBuilder();
builder.RegisterType<ConfigService>().As<IConfigService>().ExternallyOwned().SingleInstance();
IContainer container = builder.Build();
ServiceLocator.SetLocatorProvider(() => new AutofacServiceLocator(container));
}
}
Use the Bootstrapper as before for runtime mode, e.g.:
public partial class App : Application
{
protected override void OnStartup(StartupEventArgs e)
{
base.OnStartup(e);
Bootstrapper.Setup();
}
}
Additionally you need to add it to the application resources for design mode support:
<Application x:Class="MonitoringConfigurator.App"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:local="clr-namespace:MyBootstrapperNamespace"
StartupUri="MainWindow.xaml">
<Application.Resources>
<local:Bootstrapper x:Key="Bootstrapper" />
</Application.Resources>
</Application>
I'm a total newbie at Entity Framework and ASP.Net MVC, having learned mostly from tutorials, without having a deep understanding of either. (I do have experience on .Net 2.0, ADO.Net and WebForms)
My current doubt comes from the way I'm instancing my Entities objects.
Basically I'm doing this in my controllers:
public class PostsController : Controller {
private NorthWindEntities db = new NorthWindEntities();
public ActionResult Index() {
// Use the db object here, never explicitly Close/Dispose it
}
}
I'm doing it like this because I found it in some MSDN blog that seemed authoritative enough to me that I assumed this was a correct way.
However, I feel pretty un-easy about this. Although it saves me a lot of code, I'm used to doing:
using (NorthWindEntities db = new NorthWindEntities() {
}
In every single method that needs a connection, and if that method calls others that'll need it, it'll pass db as a parameter to them. This is how I did everything with my connection objects before Linq-to-SQL existed.
The other thing that makes me uneasy is that NorthWindEntities implements IDisposable, which by convention means I should be calling it's Dispose() method, and I'm not.
What do you think about this?
Is it correct to instance the Entities object as I'm doing? Should it take care of its connections by opening and closing them for each query?
Or should I be disposing it explicitly with a using() clause?
Thanks!
Controller itself implements IDisposable. So you can override Dispose and dispose of anything (like an object context) that you initialize when the controller is instantiated.
The controller only lives as long as a single request. So having a using inside an action and having one object context for the whole controller is exactly the same number of contexts: 1.
The big difference between these two methods is that the action will have completed before the view has rendered. So if you create your ObjectContext in a using statement inside the action, the ObjectContext will have been disposed before the view has rendered. So you better have read anything from the context that you need before the action completes. If the model you pass to the view is some lazy list like an IQueryable, you will have disposed the context before the view is rendered, causing an exception when the view tries to enumerate the IQueryable.
By contrast, if you initialize the ObjectContext when the Controller is initialized (or write lazy initialization code causing it to be initialized when the action is run) and dispose of the ObjectContext in the Controller.Dispose, then the context will still be around when the view is rendered. In this case, it is safe to pass an IQueryable to the view. The Controller will be disposed shortly after the view is rendered.
Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that it's probably a bad idea to have your Controller be aware of the Entity Framework at all. Look into using a separate assembly for your model and the repository pattern to have the controller talk to the model. A Google search will turn up quite a bit on this.
You are making a good point here. How long should the ObjectContext live? All patterns and practises books (like Dino Esposito's Microsoft-NET-Architecting-Applications) tell you that a DataContext must not live long, nor should it be cached.
I was just wondering why not having, in your case, a ControllerBase class (I'm not aware of the MVC implementation, so bear with me) where the ObjectContext gets initiated once for all controller. Especially think about the Identity Map Pattern, that's already implemented by Entity Framework. Even though you need to call another controller as your PostsController, it would still work with the same Context and improve performance as well.