Should i care/have knowledge about nHibernate before choosing Fluent nHibernate? - nhibernate

Question

I was going through Fluent nhibernate wiki and i know that Fluent nhibernate is built on top of nHibernate... Should i care/have knowledge about nHibernate before choosing Fluent nHibernate? Any suggestion...

Answer 1

You absolutely need to learn NHibernate. Fluent NHibernate is only a wrapper over NHibernate's mapping API, and mapping is only a small part of working with NHibernate.
Queries (Criteria/HQL/LINQ), sessions, locking, lazy/eager loading, etc, are concepts that you must know when working with NHibernate and have nothing to do with Fluent NHibernate.

Answer 2

I say yes. If you know NHibernate's XML based mapping format, it's much easier to track down errors via fluent NH's [FluentMappingsContainer].ExportTo([e.g. Environment.CurrentDirectory]).
Edit: ASP.NET MVC example w/ StructureMap
StructureMap:
private static void ConfigureSQLiteInMemoryTest(IInitializationExpression init)
{
init.For<ISessionFactory>()
.Singleton()
.Use( Fluently.Configure()
.Database( SQLiteConfiguration.Standard.InMemory().AdoNetBatchSize( 100 ).ShowSql )
.Mappings( m => m.FluentMappings.AddFromAssemblyOf<MyEntity>() )
.ExposeConfiguration( config =>
{
config.SetProperty( NHEnvironment.ProxyFactoryFactoryClass,
typeof( ProxyFactoryFactory ).AssemblyQualifiedName );
} )
.BuildSessionFactory() );
init.For<ISession>()
.LifecycleIs( GetLifecycle() )
.Use( context =>
{
var session = context.GetInstance<ISessionFactory>().OpenSession();
new TestData( session, _nhConfig ).Create();
return session;
} );
}
Tell MVC to use a StructureMap based controller factory:
Global.asax.cs:
protected void Application_Start()
{
[...]
var controllerFactory = new StructureMapControllerFactory( ObjectFactory.Container );
ControllerBuilder.Current.SetControllerFactory( controllerFactory );
[...]
}
public class StructureMapControllerFactory : DefaultControllerFactory
{
private readonly IContainer _container;
public StructureMapControllerFactory( IContainer container )
{
_container = container;
}
protected override IController GetControllerInstance( RequestContext requestContext, Type controllerType )
{
if (controllerType == null)
return null;
return (IController)_container.GetInstance( controllerType );
}
}

Answer 3

of course, fluent nhibernate is mainly there to make mapping simpler (and type safe)

Answer 4

YES!
You will get completely lost if you do not understand at least the basics of NHibernate. NHibernate is a complex tool and fluent NHibernate really only makes working with it more convenient - it does not hide the complexity.

Answer 5

Try the answer for this question for tutorials
Where can i find a Fluent NHibernate Tutorial?
It makes sense to have a grasp of NHibernate before you learn fluent nhibernate. As #Jaguar says it sits on top of nhibernate.
It might be worth looking at nhlambdaextensions.googlecode.com - although this is going to be included in the next version!
For Nhibernate tutorials check out dimecasts or tekpub - or nhibernate.info - see question
Learning NHibernate
NHibernate is database agnostic. :)