oData WCF service - hide an element - wcf

I'm new to WCF. My web project has an ADO.NET Entity Data Model (aka EF edmx), which has the Entity Container Name JobSystemEntities.
I've created a simple oData WCF data service which uses JobSystemEntities, and it works great:
public class JobService : DataService<JobSystemEntities>
{
public static void InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration config)
{
config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("Jobs", EntitySetRights.ReadSingle);
}
However, this exposes all of the properties on the Job. I would like to hide sensitive data, i.e. the Cost field/property/column of the Job table.

I am posting this a but late, but it might help others.
You can use the IgnoreProperties attribute http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.data.services.ignorepropertiesattribute.aspx on your class.
You will have to define a partial Job class in order to do this. Something in the lines of:
namespace DAL.Entities
{
[IgnoreProperties("Cost")]
public partial class Job
{
}
}

I've done something similar to this. A good starting point is found here:
http://weblogs.asp.net/rajbk/archive/2010/05/15/pre-filtering-and-shaping-odata-feeds-using-wcf-data-services-and-the-entity-framework-part-1.aspx
Basically you will need to separate the protected properties of an entity into a separate entity that is linked as a property of the other. Once that is done user a Query Interceptor to restrict when that protected entity can be viewed.
[QueryInterceptor("YourObjectsProtectedProperties")]
public Expression<Func<YourObjectsProtectedProperties, bool>> OnReadYourObjectsProtectedProperties()
{
if (ShowEntityToUser())
return o => true == true;
return o => true == false;
}

Related

Access to container of Simple Injector MVC views

In a Sitecore project I've integrated Simple Injector using this article
It uses sitecore pipelines and then uses a method in App_start
namespace BBC.App_Start
{
public class SimpleInjector : IPackage
{
public void RegisterServices(Container container)
{
GetContainer.RegisterServices(container);
container.Register(() => new SitecoreContext(), Lifestyle.Scoped);
container.Register(() => new Container(), Lifestyle.Singleton);
}
}
}
Simply I can inject container into controller constructor but can't have container in View files.
I tried to declare a static property in App-start and save container to it. but still I'm getting no registration type in Views
What is the best way to have container object in views?
As Stephen suggests in his comment, the literal answer to your question is "you shouldn't do that - because it's not really the way MVC and DI are supposed to work". The more detailed answer goes something like this:
The job of your view is to present data that it has been passed via the Model. Views should not really contain logic. Very simple stuff like "if flag is false, hide this block of mark-up" is ok, but the more complex code to work out what the value of the flag is shouldn't be in the view.
MVC tries to make our website code better by encouraging you to separate presentation (the View) from data (the Model) and logic (the Controller). This should make our code easier to work with - So if you have processing that needs doing, then it should really be happening when your controller method runs.
If your view requires some special data, best practice suggests it should work it out in the controller method and pass it to the view in the model. The code might look more like this:
public class MyModel
{
public string SpecialData { get; set; }
}
public class MyController : Controller
{
public ActionResult DoSomething()
{
// do whatever processing is needed
var somethingCalculate = resultFromYourOtherObject();
// do other stuff
var model = new MyModel() { SpecialData = somethingCalculated };
return View(model);
}
}
And then the View just needs to accept the MyModel class as its model, and render the SpecialData property - no logic required.
I think also it's considered a bad idea to have calls to fetch objects from your DI container spread about your codebase. For MVC apps, generally your DI container gets wired in to the process of creating a controller for a request when the app starts up. Rather than passing about a DI Container into your controllers, the DI framework extends the Controller-creation process, and the container isn't exposed outside of this. When the MVC runtime needs to create a controller, the controller-creation logic uses the DI framework to fetch objects for all the controller's dependencies.
Without more detail about what you actually want to achieve, it's difficult to say what the "right" approach to creating your object(s) here is, but the two most common patterns are probably:
1) Constructor injection: Your controller has a parameter which accepts the object required. The DI container creates this object for you at the point where it creates the controller, so your controller gets all its dependencies when it is created. Good for: scenarios where you know how to create the object at the beginning of the request.
public interface IMySpecialObject
{
string DoSomething();
}
public class MyController : Controller
{
private IMySpecialObject _specialObject;
public MyController(IMySpecialObject specialObject)
{
_specialObject = specialObject;
}
public ActionResult RenderAView()
{
// do some stuff
var data = _specialObject.DoSomething();
return View(data);
}
}
As long as IMySpecialObject and a concrete implementation for it are registered with your DI container when your app starts up, all is well.
2) Factory classes: Sometimes, however, the object in question might be optional, or it might require data that's not available at controller-creation time to create it. In that case, your DI framework could pass in a Factory object to your controller, and this is used to do the construction of the special object later.
public interface ISpecialFactory
{
ISpecialObject CreateSpecialObject(object data);
}
public class MyController : Controller
{
private IMySpecialFactory _specialFactory;
public MyController(IMySpecialFactory specialFactory)
{
_specialFactory = specialFactory;
}
public ActionResult RenderAView()
{
// do some stuff
if( requireSpecialObject )
{
var data = getSomeData();
var specialObject = _specialFactory.CreateSpecialObject(data);
var data = _specialObject.DoSomething();
return View(data);
}
return View("someOtherView");
}
}
But a good book on using DI may suggest other approaches that fit your specific problem better.

MVC 4 How to process a url parameter on every page, base controller?

Looking for some guidance in designing my new MVC 4 app.
I would like to have a url parameter s=2011 on every page of the app to let me know what year of data I'm working with. Obviously, the user will have a way to change that parameter as needed.
I will need that parameter in every controller and wondering the best way to do this. I was thinking of creating a base controller that reads Request.QueryString and puts the year into a public property. However, considering all the extensability points in MVC, I'm wondering if there's a better way to do this?
This very much depends on the design of your app, but just to give you two alternatives
IActionFilter
If you are doing data context per request you can use a global IActionFilter to hook pre-action execution globally and apply a query filter to your data context behind the scenes.
Major down-side of this is that to test the controller you will need to have the full MVC pipeline setup so that the actionfilter gets applied properly.
Dependency Injection
Instead of using sub-classing (base controller as you say) you can use dependency injection . Keeping things more loose will allow you to pull the filter from query string, cookie, user setting in the database or whatever else - without your controller knowing where it comes from.
Here is some pseudo code how I would do it if I was using something like Entity Framework or Nhibernate (also I am sure applicable with other technologies as well)
public Car
{
public string Year { get; set; }
}
public class CarsDataContext : DbContext
{
private IQuerable<Cars> _cars = null;
private Func<Car, bool> _carsFilter = null;
public IQuerable<Car> Cars {
get {
if (_carsFitler != null)
return _cars.Where(_carsFitler);
return _cars;
}
set { _cars = value; }
}
public void ApplyCarsFilter(Func<Car, bool> predicate)
{
_carsFilter = predicate;
}
}
Assuming you have dependency injection setup already (NInject or whichever other framework) in you can configure how the context to be intialized
Bind<CarsDataContext>().ToMethod(() => {
string yearFilter = GetYearFilter(); // can be coming from anywhere
CarsDataContext dataContext = new CarsDataContext();
dataContext.Applyfilter(car => car.Year == yearFilter);
return dataContext;
}).InRequestScope();
Then my controller knows nothing about the data filtering and I can easily test it:
class MyController : Controller
{
public MyController(CarsDataContext dataContext)
{
}
...
}
However I would only do this is filtering the dataset was across many controllers and important part of my software. Otherwise it's pure over-engineering.

How to tackle behavior variation with StructureMap?

I have a set of componentes registered to StructureMap. What should be the best way to resolve a component depending on the actual Tenant?
Small example:
There are two tenants, say, Yellow and Green.
I have an IValidator that has two implementations: YellowValidator and GreenValidator.
Say the application is MVC and that the tentant comes form the URL.
So, I just need the proper IValidator to be injected depending on the tenant.
I've seen many solutions for multi-tenant applications that deals only with multitenancy of data, normaly configuring different databases depending on the tenant. That involves only parameter passing. But this is the case where variation occurs in behavior, not in data. I want the IoC container to Resolve the right instance transparently.
EDIT: more info:
The IValidator interface have a simple method bool Validate(), but the implementation require some injection.
There are other custom validators, but they are used by both tenants.
There is a clear tentant strategy based on the URL. This means that each request can have a different tenant, and that a single application serves both tenants.
There are many ways to skin a cat. It's hard for me to guess the design of your application, so here is an idea. Things that come in mind are to hide validators behind a composite, to allow users of the IValidator interface to know nothing about having many implementations. Such composite can look like this:
public class ValidatorComposite : IValidator
{
private IEnumerable<IValidator> validators;
public ValidatorComposite(
IEnumerable<IValidator> validators)
{
this.validators = validators;
}
public bool Validate(object instance)
{
return this.validators.All(v => v.Validate(instance));
}
}
You can create multiple composites and register them by key where the key is the name of the tenant (but without keyed registrations is probably just as easy). Those composites can be wrapped in yet another composite that will delegate to the proper tenant-specific composite. Such a tenant-selecting composite could look like this:
public class TenantValidatorComposite : IValidator
{
private ITenantContext tenantContext;
private IValidator defaultValidator;
private IDictionary<string, IValidator> tenantValidators;
public ValidatorComposite(
ITenantContext tenantContext,
IValidator defaultValidator,
IDictionary<string, IValidator> tenantValidators)
{
this.tenantContext = tenantContext;
this.defaultValidator = defaultValidator;
this.tenantValidators = tenantValidators;
}
public bool Validate(object instance)
{
string name = this.tenantContext.CurrentTenant.Name;
return this.defaultValidator.Validate(instance) &&
this.tenantValidators[name].Validate(instance);
}
}
The ITenantContext is an abstraction that allows you to get the current tenant within the current context. You probably already have something like that in place, but I imagine an implementation to look something like this:
class UrlBasedTenantContext : ITenantContext
{
public Tenant Current
{
get
{
// Naive implementation.
if (HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.Contains("tenant1"))
{
return Tenant1;
}
return Tenant2;
}
}
}
Create a TenantValidatorComposite would be easy:
var defaultValidator = CompositeValidator(
GetAllDefaultValidators());
var tenantValidators = new Dictionary<string, IValidator>()
{
{ "tenant1", new CompositeValidator(GetValidatorsFor("tenant1")) },
{ "tenant2", new CompositeValidator(GetValidatorsFor("tenant2")) },
};
var tenantValidator = new TenantValidatorComposite(
new UrlBasedTenantContext(),
defaultValidator,
tenantValidators);
I hope this helps.

Adding additional properties in ViewModel

I have a Silverlight 4 app using EF & WCF RIA Services with a SQL DB. I have a Tasks table that I want to display in a grid or listbox and I want to do a custom grouping. The custom grouping would be Overdue, today, tomrrow, next 7 days and future.
If I understand the concepts of MVVM correctly, I should be creating a custom property for my Tasks object in the TasksViewModel. But I am not sure how to do this.
I have the Tasks entity that is automatically created in the entity data model and I have a GetTasks method in the DomainService that I call in my viewmodel.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
You should have access to those types from the client. You can create a list of the Task entity on your ViewModel that you can bind to.
private List<Task> _tasks;
public List<Task> Tasks
{
get { return _tasks; }
set {
_tasks = value;
NotifyPropertyChanged("Tasks");
}
}
Or you can create a client side poco to map to if you don't want to bind directly to entities.
The following has nothing to do with the "gouping", since it doesn't seem to be your problem.
What I would do is have a property of ObservableCollection<Task>:
public ObservableCollection<Task> Tasks {get; private set;}
which I initialize in the constructor, ask the domain context to load the tasks, and then fill the collection with the data coming in the callback like so:
private TasksDomainContext context;
public TasksViewModel()
{
Tasks=new ObservableCollection<Task>();
context= new TasksDomainContext();
LoadTasks();
}
void LoadTasks()
{
context.Load(
context.GetTasksQuery(),
callback =>
{
if(callback.HasError)
{
//handle error
}
else
{
Tasks.Clear();
foreach(var task in callback.Entities)
Tasks.Add(task);
}
},
null);
}
Hope this helps ;)
P.S.: if you're having an issue with grouping, please give more details

Sending an Interface definition over the wire (WCF service)

I have a WCF service that generates loads Entity Framework objects (as well as some other structs and simple classes used to lighten the load) and sends them over to a client application.
I have changed 2 of the classes to implement an interface so that I can reference them in my application as a single object type. Much like this example:
Is it Possible to Force Properties Generated by Entity Framework to implement Interfaces?
However, the interface type is not added to my WCF service proxy client thingymebob as it is not directly referenced in the objects that are being sent back over the wire.
Therefore in my application that uses the service proxy classes, I can't cast or reference my interface..
Any ideas what I'm missing?
Here's some example code:
//ASSEMBLY/PROJECT 1 -- EF data model
namespace Model
{
public interface ISecurable
{
[DataMember]
long AccessMask { get; set; }
}
//partial class extending EF generated class
//there is also a class defined as "public partial class Company : ISecurable"
public partial class Chart : ISecurable
{
private long _AccessMask = 0;
public long AccessMask
{
get { return _AccessMask; }
set { _AccessMask = value; }
}
public void GetPermission(Guid userId)
{
ChartEntityModel model = new ChartEntityModel();
Task task = model.Task_GetMaskForObject(_ChartId, userId).FirstOrDefault();
_AccessMask = (task == null) ? 0 : task.AccessMask;
}
}
}
//ASSEMBLY/PROJECT 2 -- WCF web service
namespace ChartService
{
public Chart GetChart(Guid chartId, Guid userId)
{
Chart chart = LoadChartWithEF(chartId);
chart.GetPermission(userId); //load chart perms
return chart; //send it over the wire
}
}
Interfaces won't come across as separate entities in your WSDL - they will simply have their methods and properties added to the object that exposes them.
What you want to accomplish you can do using abstract classes. These will come across as distinct entities.
Good luck. Let us know how you decided to proceed.