I'm refactoring an old query made with EF that's taking so much time.
I was wondering with Dapper if I can automatically map such objects
public class Chest
{
public Item Item {get;set;}
}
public class Item
{
public IList<Property> Properties {get;set;}
}
public class Property
{
public int Id {get;set;}
public string Description {get;set;}
}
Is there a way I can retrieve all those items as I would do with EF?
I've seen the Query and so on but I don't understand if it meets the case
Your model is pretty straight forward, since there's only 1 collection - IList<Property>, let's assume your query is Select Id, Description from PropertyTable, then using Dapper, you can do the following:
IList<Property> PropertyList = conn.Query<Property>("Select Id, Description from PropertyTable").ToList();
After that its simple assignment:
Chest chest = new Chest{Item = new Item{Properties = PropertyList}};
This still need extra assignment, since from Dapper you get IEnumerable<T> as result, there could be a Dapper Extension, which can directly fill the Chest object, if you provide explicit object mapping, though in my view its not required, since the solution is simple
Related
I'm writing a wrapper around certain functions of mongodb to enforce certain buisiness policies (such as having a last modified date, a document version &c). These extra fields will not appear in the model and will be irrelevant and transparent to the person implementing against this library. This library will be generic.
Therefore using replaceOne is out of the question.
What I would like is some way of passing all fields in a person passed object to the Update builder - so I can use .Set/.Inc accordingly to add the other fields.
An example to demonstrate what I want is below:
public static async Task UpdatePerson(string name, Person person)
{
var client = new MongoClient("mongodb://localhost:27017");
IMongoDatabase db = client.GetDatabase("test");
IMongoCollection<Person> collection = db.GetCollection<Person>("people");
var query = Builders<Person>.Filter
.Eq("name", name);
var update = Builders<Person>.Update
//Something here - how do I pass my person's properties?
.Set("lastModified", DateTime.Now)
.Inc("version",1);
await collection.UpdateOneAsync(query, update );
}
//--
//In real life this'll work for other types, this is for demonstration only
public class Person
{
public string name {get;set;}
public string surname {get;set;}
}
So how can I go about this, without, for instance, looping through properties using Reflection?
Not sure if you are able to do this but the Mongodb Driver provides something called [BsonExtraElements].
public class Person
{
public string name {get;set;}
public string surname {get;set;}
[BsonExtraElements]
public Dictionary<string,object> AdditionalFields { get; set; }
}
What will happen is that anything that cant be serialized to the model will be filled into that dictionary, no matter the type. You can add to it as well and remove.
This will add no additional overhead to your database, The only downside to this is that querying this dictionary is somewhat not a great experience as you may need to cast specific keys to their relevant expected types.
If this is not viable I suggest the BSON approach recommended by Simon.
Yesterday I was working on a code refactor and came across an exception that I really couldn't find much information on. Here is the situation.
We have an a pair of EF entities that have a many to many relationship through a relation table. The objects in question look like this, leaving out the unnecessary bits.
public partial class MasterCode
{
public int MasterCodeId { get; set; }
...
public virtual ICollection<MasterCodeToSubCode> MasterCodeToSubCodes { get; set; }
}
public partial class MasterCodeToSubCodes
{
public int MasterCodeToSubCodeId { get; set; }
public int MasterCodeId { get; set; }
public int SubCodeId { get; set; }
...
}
Now, I attempted to run a LINQ query against these entities. We use a lot of LINQ projections into DTOs. The DTO and the query follow. masterCodeId is a parameter passed in.
public class MasterCodeDto
{
public int MasterCodeId { get; set; }
...
public ICollection<int> SubCodeIds { get; set; }
}
(from m in MasterCodes
where m.MasterCodeId == masterCodeId
select new MasterCodeDto
{
...
SubCodeIds = (from s in m.MasterCodeToSubCodes
select s.SubCodeId).ToList(),
...
}).SingleOrDefaultAsync();
The internal query throws the following exception
Expression of type 'System.Data.Entity.Infrastructure.ObjectReferenceEqualityComparer' cannot be used for constructor parameter of type 'System.Collections.Generic.IEqualityComparer`1[System.Int32]'
We have done inner queries like this before in other places in our code and not had any issues. The difference in this one is that we aren't new-ing up an object and projecting into it but rather returning a group of ints that we want to put in a list.
I have found a workaround by changing the ICollection on MasterCodeDto to IEnumerable and dropping the ToList() but I was never able to find out why I couldn't just select the ids and return them as a list.
Does anyone have any insight into this issue? Normally returning just an id field and calling ToList() works fine when it is not part of an inner query. Am I missing a restriction on inner queries that prevents an operation like this from happening?
Thanks.
Edit: To give an example of where this pattern is working I'll show you an example of a query that does work.
(from p in Persons
where p.PersonId == personId
select new PersonDto
{
...
ContactInformation = (from pc in p.PersonContacts
select new ContactInformationDto
{
ContactInformationId = pc.PatientContactId,
...
}).ToList(),
...
}).SingleOrDefaultAsync();
In this example, we are selecting into a new Dto rather than just selecting a single value. It works fine. The issues seems to stem from just selecting a single value.
Edit 2: In another fun twist, if instead of selecting into a MasterCodeDto I select into an anonymous type the exception is also not thrown with ToList() in place.
I think you stumbled upon a bug in Entity Framework. EF has some logic for picking an appropriate concrete type to materialize collections. HashSet<T> is one of its favorites. Apparently (I can't fully follow EF's source code here) it picks HashSet for ICollections and List for IEnumerable.
It looks like EF tries to create a HashSet by using the constructor that accepts an IEqualityComparer<T>. (This happens in EF'sDelegateFactory class, method GetNewExpressionForCollectionType.) The error is that it uses its own ObjectReferenceEqualityComparer for this. But that's an IEqualityComparer<object>, which can not be converted to an IEqualityComparer<int>.
In general I think it is best practice not to use ToList in LINQ queries and to use IEnumerable in collections in DTO types. Thus, EF will have total freedom to pick an appropriate concrete type.
I currently have the following Models in my EF Code First MVC project (edited for brevity):
public class Car
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Descrip { get; set; }
// Navigation Property.
public virtual CarColour CarColour { get; set; }
... + numerous other navigation properties.
}
public class CarColour
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public string ColourName { get; set; }
}
The CarColour table in the DB contains many rows.
In my project, I have about 10 of these sorts of tables, which are essentially lookup tables.
Rather than have 10 lookup tables (and 10 corresponding 'hard' types in code), I was tasked with implementing a more re-usable approach, instead of having loads of lookup tables, specific to Car (in this example), along the lines of having a couple of tables, one of which may hold the item types (colour, fuel-type etc.) and one which contains the various values for each of the types. The idea being that our model will be able to be re-used by many other projects - some of which will have potentially hundreds of different attributes, and as such, we won't want to create a new Class/Type in code and generate a new lookup table for each.
I am having difficulty in understanding the c# implementation of this sort of approach and hope someone may be able to give me an example of how this can be achieved in code, more specifically, how the above models would need to change, and what additional classes would be required to accomplish this?
your base entity must implement INotifyPropertyChanged and make it generic:
public virtual CarColour CarColour {
Get { return this.carColour; }
Set {
this.Carcolour; = value
OnPropertyChanged("CarColour");
}
}
For more info see :
patterns & practices: Prism in CodePlex.
http://compositewpf.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Model%20View%20ViewModel%20(MVVM)
Greetings
Bassam
This is not necessarily specific to EF but I've been down this road and didn't really enjoy it.
I wanted to use a single table to represent 'generic' information and while I thought it was smart, it soon showed it's limitations. One of them being the complexity you need to introduce when writing queries to extract this data if you're performing more than just 'get colours for this car'.
I'd say, if your data is simple key/value and the value type is always going to be the same then go for it, it might even be worth having this a mere 'meta-data' for an object:
public class Car
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Descrip { get; set; }
public MetaData CarColours { get; set; }
}
public MetaData : Dictionary<int, string>
{
public MetaData(int group){}
}
Hypothetical table:
TableMetaData(int metaGroup, int metaId, string metaValue)
If you're hoping to store different types as your value and may need to perform joining on this data - avoid it and be a bit more specific.
I am trying to replace a nasty LINQ 2 SQL hit with some dapper queries to improve performanace. In doing so I have to weave a bunch of different objects together in order to create the big object required to hold all the information I need for ASN information.
The current problem I am having is with an abstract class Orders, this class is implemented by two seperate classes AutionOrder and MerchantOrder using a discriminator property.
Since I cannot use dapper to create a object that is an abstract class I am instead using one of the public classes. however when it goes to build the object it is failing inside of GetSettableProps it is finding the proper DeclaringType but the GetProperty method is returning null when it is looking for an property that is internal or is an EntitySet. I've tried to hack around it using t.BaseType.GetProperty as well as p.GetAccessors().First().GetBaseDefinition().DeclaringType.GetProperty(p.Name).GetSetMethod(true) with no success.
dummy objects:
Order
OrderID, Name, Address, RowVersion(internal), Shipments(EntitySet),OrderDetails(EntitySet), Customer(EntityRef)
Shipment
ShipmentID, OrderID, TrackingNumber
OrderDetails
OrderDetailID, OrderID, Product, QTY, Price
Customer
CustomerID, Name,
For this particular SQL hit I am trying to grab some of the 1 to 1 relationship mappings I need.
SELECT o.* from Orders as o left join Customers as c on o.CustomerID = c.CustomerID where o.OrderID in (1,2,3);
This is what I am using to utilize dapper and let it do it's magic:
using (var connection = new SqlConnection(_ConnectionString))
{
connection.Open();
results = connection.Query<MerchantOrder, MerchantCustomer, MerchantOrder>(sql.ToString(),
(o, c) => { o.Customer = c; return o; },
splitOn: "CustomerID");
}
If I change Order to be a public class this problem goes away though, but this is not a desired side-effect. It is failing when trying to set the propInfo for RowVersion - switching this to public instead of internal solved this problem - although not desired. But then it fails when it is trying to create the Shipments objects for Order. Again none of this is an issue when Order is a public class.
Also I am doing separate queries to pull in Many to one relationships such as Shipments to Orders and OrderDetails to Orders and normalizing the results into a proper Order Object.
MerchantOrder is pretty much an empty class with no real special logic. The discriminating different here is just how we end up finding the CustomerID which is abstracted away prior to the actual SQL hit anyway.
Also I am using the latest version of dapper as of 12/20/2011.
I really like dapper, but this problem is making my head asplode - so thanks for the help!
This was a bug, that is now fixed in trunk:
public class AbstractInheritance
{
public abstract class Order
{
internal int Internal { get; set; }
protected int Protected { get; set; }
public int Public { get; set; }
public int ProtectedVal { get { return Protected; } }
}
public class ConcreteOrder : Order
{
public int Concrete { get; set; }
}
}
// http://stackoverflow.com/q/8593871
public void TestAbstractInheritance()
{
var order = connection.Query<AbstractInheritance.ConcreteOrder>("select 1 Internal,2 Protected,3 [Public],4 Concrete").First();
order.Internal.IsEqualTo(1);
order.ProtectedVal.IsEqualTo(2);
order.Public.IsEqualTo(3);
order.Concrete.IsEqualTo(4);
}
One side note is that, by design, we do not set private fields or properties in the base classes. The behaviour can be magical and not consistent.
Eg:
class A { private int a {get; set;} }
class B : A { private int a {get; set;} }
class C: B {}
// What should "select 1 a" do? Set it on A? Set it on B? Set it on Both? Set it on neither?
We went with "set it on neither"
I think is not possible (because of the abstract class) without modifying your code.
I had a similar problem and ended up creating a new object private to the assembly where I have my repositories that derived from the abstract base class.
This class is not abstract and only visible to the repository class that stores the data, this class had all the required methods for the actual table.
Let's say I need to display a list of customers, but only want to display the Name and somehow associate the key to the name within a list control.
It would probably be costly to retrieve the entire list of customers and all it's properties. In this scenario, would it be better to create another class with the properties that are required (in this case Id and Name)?
A basic implementation could look like this:
public class Customer {
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Firstname { get; set; }
public string Lastname { get; set; }
public int Age { get; set; }
.....
}
public class CustomerListView {
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
}
public interface IRepository<T> {
public T Find(int id);
public IEnumerable<T> FindAll();
....
}
public class Repository<T>: IRepository<T> {
....
}
public class CustomerRepository: Repository<Customer> {
public IEnumerable<CustomerListView> FindAllListView();
}
Would this approach be appropriate? What other options would there be?
In order to achieve such goals, I create a simple 'View' class, for example CustomerView, which just contains the properties that are needed to display an overview.
My Repository then has a method which returns a collection of these CustomerView objects.
I mostly use NHibernate in my projects. Nhibernate allows you to use 'projections'.
So, what I do in my repository is this:
(note that the code below is just some pseudo-code; it won't compile).
public IList<CustomerView> GetAllCustomers()
{
ICriteria crit = _session.CreateCriteria (typeof(Customer));
crit.AddProjection ( ... );
crit.SetResultTransformer (new EntityToBeanTransformer(typeof(CustomerView));
return crit.ToList();
}
In fact, it comes down to this: I tell my O/R mapper that it should query Customers, but that it should return entities of type 'CustomerView'.
In the defintion of the projection, I also define which properties of the Customer class map to which properties of the CustomerView class.
Then, the O/R mapper is smart enough to generate a very simple query, which only retrieves those fields that are required to populate the CustomerView class.
For instance, the query that is executed can be as simple as:
SELECT customerid, customername FROM tblCustomer
If you use IQueryable as your return instead of IEnumerable than there is no cost of doing:
CustomerRepository().GetAll().Find(1) because AsQueryable doesn't actually execute until you request data. That means LINQ can optimize it out to a:
SELECT .... FROM .... WHERE ID = 1 instead of
GET EVERYTHING. FIND WHERE THE ID = 1
See this post for an explanation:
Why use AsQueryable() instead of List()?
Using this approach you could create an anonymous class and futher narrow down the data going over the wire to just what you want. That way the query generated by LINQ is optimized to the fullest.
If you have to retrieve the list form a Database then your proposal makes some sense but I would look into a Linq and anonymous type solution.
If the list of Customers already exists in memory then there there are no savings.
You could combine the techniques used by Nissan and Frederik (anonymous types and NHibernate) by using Linq-to-NHibernate.
Item #31 in Bill Wagner's More Effective C# says "limit type scope by using anonymous types", and I agree. BTW, I recommend the whole book.