Overriding one property for a hierarchy of classes - oop

I have a hieraarchy of classes. Root class is abstract, and is called Contact, and it has a property DisplayName. On GUI I have a dropdown where various contacts are listed, using their DisplayName property.
I have no acess to source code of those classes.
I want to somehow override Contact.DisplayName property, to make it display something else in my particular scenario. I can not just create subclass of Contact and override property there, because there is whole hierarchy under Contact class. Is there a way to alter a property for whole hierarchy of classes ? Maybe using delegates ?
I am using exotic programming language called Gosu, but the solution based on some common object oriented language could help me a lot too.

I haven't tried but maybe with Enhancements. I'm not sure that it works because DisplayName it's a property of entities.
Update:
There is a folder in Guidewire Studio, configuration/config/Entity Names. Open Contact.en and there is you can customize the DisplayName.

Can you type cast the Contact entity to its subtype and try to display it in GUI. Something like (Contact as Person).DisplayName

Related

How to get whole viewmodel in taghelper process method?

Is it possible to get the whole view model in tag helper Process method (.NET Core MVC)?
Everything passed to the tag helper is done via attributes. If you want the whole view model, then you'd simply so domething like:
<mytag model="#Model" />
And then you'd need a property on your tag helper to bind this to like:
public MyViewModel Model { get; set; }
The name of the attribute corresponds to the name of the property. There's nothing special about "model" here.
However, the utility of that is going to be limited. Tag helpers are intended to be somewhat generic. That's the point: encapsulating reusable logic. If you tie it to a particular view model class (based on the property), then it will only work with that particular view model. The only way to make it more generic would be to use a base class or to literally type it as object, so that anything could be passed. However, with a base class, 1) you need to have every view model inherit from this base class and 2) even then, you'd only be able to use properties on the base class. With object, you wouldn't really be able to reference any properties unless you downcast it to a particular view model class first. While that would allow you to handle any scenario, in principle, you'd be forced to have long blocks of switch or if statements in your tag helper to conditionally handle different scenarios.
Long and short, it's not a great idea for many reasons to pass the whole model. The tag helper should have one specific purpose, and you should only pass things that are specifically needed by it, which also allows you to be explicit about those needs.
If you're looking for something to handle a whole model, you're more likely looking for a partial view or view component, rather than a tag helper.
The viewmodel is actually available if you bind first the for element as :
[HtmlAttributeName("asp-for")]
public ModelExpression For { get; set; }
Then you can access it in your tag helper Process or ProcessAsync through:
For.ModelExplorer.Container.Model

In static method bindings that exist inside DataTemplates, is it possible to pass in the instance of the entity?

Example:
<DataTemplate x:DataType="FooEntity">
<Grid Background="{x:Bind MyClass.MyStaticBindingMethod(???)}" />
</DataTemplate>
It’s easy enough to pass in properties of the entity, but I can’t see a way to pass in the instance itself. Is this feature not supported? I could store a reference to this in FooEntity with a property called Instance (for example), and then go MyClass.MyStaticBindingMethod(Instance), but just want to make sure there isn't a cleaner way.
Relevant docs: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xaml-platform/x-bind-markup-extension
You cannot pass the instance itself onto a DataTemplate.
The DataTemplate is only responsible for describing the visual structure of a data object and therefore its not part of its job to hold a explicit reference to any CLR object.
DataTemplate is defined to extend the visual structure of data objects, such as GridView/ListView, and those already handle the possibility of referencing to Collections, by setting the ItemsSource dependency property. Taking advantage of this, the DataTemplate simply exposes the customization of your visual structure. However this visual structure should be followed with the necessary bindings, to achieve your desired custom behavior.
If you are dealing with x:Bind, you will have to set the x:DataType, to the type of the Collection which you are setting as the Control ItemsSource, because the compiler needs that information at compile-time.
That is not a problem for Binding because those are evaluated at runtime, with the help of reflection.
I am not sure if I understand correctly, but to bind this, meaning the entity directly, you can just use empty binding:
Background="{x:Bind}"
or
Background="{Binding}"
This however means that FooEntity should derive from Brush so that it is compatible with Background type.

Yii - Cactiveform, cform, form builder - confusion

Those are three concepts on Yii that I really don't get what should we use, on what scenarios?
Can anyone be kind enough to clarify those Yii elements, and on what situation should we use them?
In documentation of CForm one can read the following:
...we can divide a form
in two parts: those that specify each individual form inputs, and
those that decorate the form inputs. A CForm object represents the former part...
...and CActiveForm represents the latter.
In other words, CForm specifies elements of the form but CActiveForm (being a widget) renders it.
Looking at the source code we state that CForm can also render() itself and its rendering relies on and is wrapped by CActiveForm widget by introducing its configuration property activeForm, though rendering input elements and buttons is implemented by its own methods renderElements() and renderButtons() relatively. By default their implementations rely on classes using CHtml's static methods what is exactly the same (or almost exactly the same) what CActiveForm's rendering methods do. Of course, default behavior can be overriden by extending the class.
That's why it's the question of a taste which technique to use: CActiveForm widget alone combining form fields' and buttons' declaration with their representation in a view file by calling convenient (required) methods of CActiveForm instance or CForm class declaring form's input specifications in a separate configuration file and customizing its rendering by pointing at appropriate active form widget and/or by overriding default rendering methods. The latter technique allows to reuse a form in several actions easily and is no more than using form builder.
Check here for live examples of ActiveForm, CForm, et cetera. You can also see the live Model, View & Controller files.

Dynamically changing the ViewModel of a View in an MVVM, MEF implementation

I have a usercontrol that i want to use throughout my Silverlight MEF MVVM solution.
I want to be able to link it up with one of a number of ViewModels depending on which module i am in. What this control does is list the records of a given entity so i can Add, Edit or Delete. I realized i would be using this control in multiple locations - to update several lookup tables, so i decided to make it's ViewModel dynamic. As seen below, I am using the Galasoft MVVM plugin.
if (!GalaSoft.MvvmLight.ViewModelBase.IsInDesignModeStatic)
{
// set DataContext
DataContext = PluginCatalogService.Instance.FindSharedPlugin(ViewModelTypes.ViewModelMT, PluginType.ViewModel);
_viewModel = (ViewModelMT)DataContext;
}
My question is how can i dynamically change from ViewModelMT to ViewModelCT to allow me to independently display lookup tables e.g. Maintenance Types and Contract Types on an instance of this same usercontrol? I took a look at the Viewmodel locator, but I'm still not sure how to get this done.
Thank you
I don't think this is really a ViewModel thing. It's more of a Service problem.
Your ViewModel for the control will not change but you'll dynamically slot in the required service to maintain your list. ie. MaintenanceTypeService and ContractTypesService will implement IListMaintenanceService which exposes an list of items and Add,Delete and Edit commands.

How can a custom type loaded through XAML obtain a reference to the root object

I am attempting to use XAML to represent and load a graph of custom types that form a semantic model for a business domain.
One thing I would like to do is to be able to obtain a reference to the "root object" of the graph from an object deeper in the tree. I cannot find any straightforward way of doing this other than resorting to barbarous practices like having the root object as a singleton.
Any ideas?
I don't know that this is a problem unique to XAML. All XAML is doing is instantiating your "child" objects and adding them to a collection property on the "parent" object. So if you had something like:
<my:Category Name="Products">
<my:Category.Subcategories>
<my:Category Name="Clothing" />
<my:Category Name="Jewellery" />
</my:Category.Subcategories>
</my:Category>
... then you'd end up with a "Products" category with two subcategories. It'd be up to you to code up your "Category" class in such a way that adding a subcategory saves a reference to the "owner" of that subcategory somewhere. I'd probably use a custom collection type (override the Add and Remove methods so that they set the "Parent" or "Owner" property on the object being added).