I want to add localization support to my domain object. I have the following:
class Person
{
int Id;
City city;
}
class City
{
int Id;
string Name;
}
All cities are saved in a lookup db table Cities. I would like to have:
Person p = PeopleService.GetPersonById(1);
//Assert p.City.Name == 'London' if culture == 'en-us'
I dont like doing
string City::Name { get { return ILocalizationProvider.Get(typeof(City), Id); }
I came by this article:
http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2006/12/26/LocalizingNHibernateContextualParameters.aspx
Yet I dont know whether its supported in NH 2.1 or not.
How can I instruct NH to cache all cities in 2nd-level cache to avoid joins each time for the same locale?
Is there an easy and neat way to treat database lookup tables and localization in NHibernate ?
In the article it says "Please note that this is no longer supported behavior in NHibernate 2.1 and up. It was a hack to begin with, and it isn't guaranteed to continue working."
So this will not work in your scenario. I would recommend this: http://nhforge.org/wikis/howtonh/localization-techniques.aspx
Related
I am working on an NHibernate project and have a question regarding updating transient entities.
Basically the workflow is as follows:
Create a DTO (projection) and send over the wire to client. This has a small subset of properties from the entity.
Client sends back the changed DTO
Map the DTO properties back onto the appropriate enitity so an UPDATE statement can be generated and executed by NH.
Save the entity
Point 4 is where I have the issue. Currently I can achieve this update using the session.Merge() method, however it must first load the entity from the db (assume no 2LC) before updating. So, both a select and an update statement are fired.
What I would like to do is create a transient instance of the entity, map the new values from the DTO, then have NH generate a SQL statement using only the properties I have changed. The additional select should be unnecessary as I already have the entity ID and the values required for the SET clause. Is this possible in NH?
Currently using session.Update(), all properties will be included in the update statement and an exception is raised due to the uninitialized properties that are not part of the DTO.
Essentially I need a way to specify which entity properties are dirty so only these are included in the update.
== EDIT ==
For example...
public class Person
{
public virtual int PersonId { get; set; }
public virtual string Firstname { get; set; }
public virtual string Nickname { get; set; }
public virtual string Surname { get; set; }
public virtual DateTime BirthDate { get; set; }
}
And the test case.
// Create the transient entity
Person p = new Person()
p.id = 1;
using (ISession session = factory.OpenSession())
{
session.Update(p);
// Update the entity – now attached to session
p.Firstname = “Bob”;
session.Flush();
}
I was hoping to generate a SQL statement similar to ‘UPDATE Persons SET Firstname = ‘Bob’ WHERE PersonID = 1’. Instead I get a DateTime out of range exception due to BirthDate not being initialised. It shouldn’t need BirthDate as it is not required for the SQL statement. Maybe this isn’t possible?
== /EDIT ==
Thanks in advance,
John
Dynamic-update is what you're looking for. In your mapping file (hbm.xml):
<class name="Foo" dynamic-update="true">
<!-- remainder of your class map -->
Be aware of the potential problems that this may cause. Let's say you have some domain logic that says either FirstName or Nickname must not be null. (Completely making this up.) Two people update Jon "Jonboy" Jonson at the same time. One removes his FirstName. Because dynamic-update is true, the update statement just nulls out Jon and the record is now "Jonboy" Jonson. The other simultaneous update removes his Nickname. The intent is Jon Jonboy. But only the null-out of the Nickname gets sent to the database. You now have a record with no FirstName or Nickname. If dynamic-update had been false, the second update would have set it to Jon Jonboy. Maybe this isn't an issue in your situation, but setting dynamic-update="true" has consequences and you should think through the implications.
UPDATE: Thanks for the code. That helped. The basic problem is NHibernate not having enough information. When you say session.Update(p), NHibernate has to associated a disconnected entity with the current session. It has a non-default PK. So NHibernate knows that it's an update and not an insert. When you say session.Update(p), NHibernate sees the whole entity as dirty and sends it to the database. (If you use session.Merge(obj), NHibernate selects the entity from the database and merges obj with it.) This is not what you really mean. You want to associate your object with the current session, but mark it as clean. The API is somewhat non-intuitive. You use session.Lock(obj, LockMode.None) as below.
using(var session = sessionFactory.OpenSession())
using(var tx = session.BeginTransaction()) {
var p = new Person {PersonId = 1};
session.Lock(p, LockMode.None); // <-- This is the secret sauce!
p.Firstname = "Bob";
// No need to call session.Update(p) since p is already associated with the session.
tx.Commit();
}
(N.B. dynamic-update="true" is specified in my mapping.)
This results in the following SQL:
UPDATE Person
SET Firstname = 'Bob' /* #p0_0 */
WHERE PersonId = 1 /* #p1_0 */
I use as a front-end sproutcore, and as back-end an nhibernate driven openrasta REST solution.
In sproutcore, references are actualy ID's / guid's. So an Address entity in the Sproutcore model could be:
// sproutcore code
App.Address = App.Base.extend(
street: SC.Record.attr(String, { defaultValue: "" }),
houseNumber: SC.Record.attr(String),
city: SC.Record.toOne('Funda.City')
);
with test data:
Funda.Address.FIXTURES = [
{ guid: "1",
street: "MyHomeStreet",
houseNumber: "34",
city: "6"
}
]
Here you see that the reference city has a value of 6. When, at some point in your program, you want to use that reference, it is done by:
myAddress.Get("city").MyCityName
So, Sproutcore automatically uses the supplied ID in a REST Get, and retrieves the needed record. If the record is available in de local memory of the client (previously loaded), then no round trip is made to the server, otherwise a http get is done for that ID : "http://servername/city/6". Very nice.
Nhibernate (mapped using fluent-nhibernate):
public AddressMap()
{
Schema(Config.ConfigElement("nh_default_schema", "Funda"));
Not.LazyLoad();
//Cache.ReadWrite();
Id(x => x.guid).Unique().GeneratedBy.Identity();
Table("Address");
Map(x => x.street);
Map(x => x.houseNumber);
References(x => x.city,
"cityID").LazyLoad().ForeignKey("fk_Address_cityID_City_guid");
}
Here i specified the foreign key, and to map "cityID" on the database table. It works ok.
BUT (and these are my questions for the guru's):
You can specify to lazy load / eager load a reference (city). Off course you do not want to eager load all your references. SO generally your tied to lazy loading.
But when Openrast (or WCF or ...) serializes such an object, it iterates the properties, which causes all the get's of the properties to be fired, which causes all of the references to be lazy loaded.
SO if your entity has 5 references, 1 query for the base object, and 5 for the references will be done. You might better be off with eager loading then ....
This sucks... Or am i wrong?
As i showed how the model inside sproutcore works, i only want the ID's of the references. So i Don't want eagerloading, and also not lazy loading.
just a "Get * from Address where ID = %" and get that mapped to my Address entity.
THen i also have the ID's of the references which pleases Sproutcore and me (no loading of unneeded references). But.... can NHibernate map the ID's of the references only?
And can i later indicate nHibernate to fully load the reference?
One approach could be (but is not a nice one) to load all reference EAGER (with join) (what a waste of resources.. i know) and in my Sever-side Address entity:
// Note: NOT mapped as Datamember, is NOT serialized!
public virtual City city { get; set; }
Int32 _cityID;
[Datamember]
public virtual Int32 cityID
{
get
{
if (city != null)
return city .guid;
else
return _cityID;
}
set
{
if (city!= null && city.guid != value)
{
city= null;
_cityID = value;
}
else if (city == null)
{
_cityID = value;
}
}
}
So i get my ID property for Sproutcore, but on the downside all references are loaded.
A better idea for me???
nHibernate-to-linq
3a. I want to get my address without their references (but preferably with their id's)
Dao myDao = new Dao();
from p in myDao.All()
select p;
If cities are lazy loading in my mapping, how can i specify in the linq query that i want it also to include my city id only?
3b.
I want to get addresses with my cities loaded in 1 query: (which are mapped as lazyloaded)
Dao myDao = new Dao();
from p in myDao.All()
join p.city ???????
select p;
My Main Question:
As argued earlier, with lazy loading, all references are lazy loaded when serializing entities. How can I prevent this, and only get ID's of references in a more efficient way?
Thank you very much for reading, and hopefully you can help me and others with the same questions. Kind regards.
as a note you wrote you do this
myAddress.Get("city").MyCityName
when it should be
myAddress.get("city").get("MyCityName")
or
myAddress.getPath("city.MyCityName")
With that out of the way, I think your question is "How do I not load the city object until I want to?".
Assuming you are using datasources, you need to manage in your datasource when you request the city object. So in retrieveRecord in your datasource simply don't fire the request, and call dataSourceDidComplete with the appropriate arguments (look in the datasource.js file) so the city record is not in the BUSY state. You are basically telling the store the record was loaded, but you pass an empty hash, so the record has no data.
Of course the problem with this is at some point you will need to retrieve the record. You could define a global like App.WANTS_CITY and in retrieveRecords only do the retrieve when you want the city. You need to manage the value of that trigger; statecharts are a good place to do this.
Another part of your question was "How do I load a bunch of records at once, instead of one request for each record?"
Note on the datasource there is a method retrieveRecords. You can define your own implementation to this method, which would allow you to fetch any records you want -- that avoids N requests for N child records -- you can do them all in one request.
Finally, personally, I tend to write an API layer with methods like
getAddress
and
getCity
and invoke my API appropriately, when I actually want the objects. Part of this approach is I have a very light datasource -- I basically bail out of all the create/update/fetch methods depending on what my API layer handles. I use the pushRetrieve and related methods to update the store.
I do this because the store uses in datasources in a very rigid way. I like more flexibility; not all server APIs work in the same way.
My current project is using NHibernate 3.0b1 and the NHibernate.Linq.Query<T>() API. I'm pretty fluent in LINQ, but I have absolutely no experience with HQL or the ICriteria API. One of my queries isn't supported by the IQueryable API, so I presume I need to use one of the previous APIs -- but I have no idea where to start.
I've tried searching the web for a good "getting started" guide to ICriteria, but the only examples I've found are either far too simplistic to apply here or far too advanced for me to understand. If anyone has some good learning materials to pass along, it would be greatly appreciated.
In any case, the object model I'm querying against looks like this (greatly simplified, non-relevant properties omitted):
class Ticket {
IEnumerable<TicketAction> Actions { get; set; }
}
abstract class TicketAction {
Person TakenBy { get; set; }
DateTime Timestamp { get; set; }
}
class CreateAction : TicketAction {}
class Person {
string Name { get; set; }
}
A Ticket has a collection of TicketAction describing its history. TicketAction subtypes include CreateAction, ReassignAction, CloseAction, etc. All tickets have a CreateAction added to this collection when created.
This LINQ query is searching for tickets created by someone with the given name.
var createdByName = "john".ToUpper();
var tickets = _session.Query<Ticket>()
.Where(t => t.Actions
.OfType<CreateAction>()
.Any(a => a.TakenBy.Name.ToUpper().Contains(createdByName));
The OfType<T>() method causes a NotSupportedException to be thrown. Can I do this using ICriteria instead?
try something like this. It's uncompiled, but it should work as long as IEnumerable<TicketAction> Actions and Person TakenBy is never null. If you set it to an empty list in the ticket constructor, that will solve a problem with nulls.
If you add a reference to the Ticket object in the TicketAction, you could do something like this:
ICriteria criteria = _session.CreateCriteria(typeof(CreateAction))
.Add(Expression.Eq("TakenBy.Name", createdByName));
var actions = criteria.List<CreateAction>();
var results = from a in criteria.List<>()
select a.Ticket;
In my experience, nhibernate has trouble with criteria when it comes to lists when the list is on the object side - such as is your case. When it is a list of values on the input side, you can use Expression.Eq. I've always had to find ways around this limitation through linq, where I get an initial result set filtered down as best as I can, then filter again with linq to get what I need.
OfType is supported. I'm not sure ToUpper is though, but as SQL ignores case it does not matter (as long as you are not also running the query in memory...). Here is a working unit test from the nHibernate.LINQ project:
var animals = (from animal in session.Linq<Animal>()
where animal.Children.OfType<Mammal>().Any(m => m.Pregnant)
select animal).ToArray();
Assert.AreEqual("789", animals.Single().SerialNumber);
Perhaps your query should look more like the following:
var animals = (from ticket in session.Linq<Ticket>()
where ticket.Actions.OfType<CreateAction>().Any(m => m.TakenBy.Name.Contains("john"))
select ticket).ToArray();
I'm trying to use Lucene to query a domain that has the following structure
Student 1-------* Attendance *---------1 Course
The data in the domain is summarised below
Course.name Attendance.mandatory Student.name
-------------------------------------------------
cooking N Bob
art Y Bob
If I execute the query "courseName:cooking AND mandatory:Y" it returns Bob, because Bob is attending the cooking course, and Bob is also attending a mandatory course. However, what I really want to query for is "students attending a mandatory cooking course", which in this case would return nobody.
Is it possible to formulate this as a Lucene query? I'm actually using Compass, rather than Lucene directly, so I can use either CompassQueryBuilder or Lucene's query language.
For the sake of completeness, the domain classes themselves are shown below. These classes are Grails domain classes, but I'm using the standard Compass annotations and Lucene query syntax.
#Searchable
class Student {
#SearchableProperty(accessor = 'property')
String name
static hasMany = [attendances: Attendance]
#SearchableId(accessor = 'property')
Long id
#SearchableComponent
Set<Attendance> getAttendances() {
return attendances
}
}
#Searchable(root = false)
class Attendance {
static belongsTo = [student: Student, course: Course]
#SearchableProperty(accessor = 'property')
String mandatory = "Y"
#SearchableId(accessor = 'property')
Long id
#SearchableComponent
Course getCourse() {
return course
}
}
#Searchable(root = false)
class Course {
#SearchableProperty(accessor = 'property', name = "courseName")
String name
#SearchableId(accessor = 'property')
Long id
}
What you are trying to do is sometimes known as "scoped search" or "xml search" - the ability to search based on a set of related sub-elements. Lucene does not support this natively but there are some tricks you can do to get it to work.
You can put all of the course data associated with a student in a single field. Then bump the term position by a fixed amount (like 100) between the terms for each course. You can then do a proximity search with phrase queries or span queries to force a match for attributes of a single course. This is how Solr supports multi-valued fields.
Another workaround is to add fake getter and index it
Something like:
#SearchableComponent
Course getCourseMandatory() {
return course + mandatory;
}
Try
+courseName:cooking +mandatory:Y
We use pretty similar queries and this works for us:
+ProdLineNum:1920b +HouseBrand:1
This selects everything in product line 1920b that is also a house brand (generic).
You can just create queries as text string and then parse that to get your query object. Presume you have seen Apache Lucene - Query Parser Syntax ?
I need to write a row to the database regardless of whether it already exists or not. Before using NHibernate this was done with a stored procedure. The procedure would attempt an update and if no rows were modified it would fallback to an insert. This worked well because the application doesn't care if the record exists.
With NHibernate, the solutions I have found require loading the entity and modifying it, or deleting the entity so the new one can be inserted. The application does have to care if the record already exists. Is there a way around that?
Does the Id Matter?
Assigned Id
The object has a keyword as an assigned id and is the primary key in the table.
I understand that SaveOrUpdate() will call the Save() or Update() method as appropriate based on the Id. Using an assigned id, this won't work because the id isn't an unsaved-value. However a Version or Timestamp field could be used as an indicator instead. In reality, this isn't relevant because this only reflects on whether the object in memory has been associated with a record in the database; it does not indicate if the record exists or not in the database.
Generated Id
If the assigned id were truly the cause of the problem, I could use a generated id instead of the keyword as the primary key. This would avoid the NHibernate Insert/Update issue as it would effectively always insert. However, I still need to prevent duplicate keywords. With a unique index on the keyword column it will still throw an exception for a duplicate keyword even if the primary key is different.
Another Approach?
Perhaps the problem isn't really with NHibernate, but the way this is modeled. Unlike other areas of the application, this is more data-centric rather object-centric. It is nice that NHibernate makes it easy to read/write and eliminates the stored procedures. But the desire to simply write without regard to existing values doesn't fit well with the model of an object's identity model. Is there a better way to approach this?
I`m using
public IList<T> GetByExample<T>(T exampleInstance)
{
return _session.CreateCriteria(typeof(T))
.Add(Example.Create(exampleInstance))
.List<T>();
}
public void InsertOrUpdate<T>(T target)
{
ITransaction transaction = _session.BeginTransaction();
try
{
var res=GetByExample<T>(target);
if( res!=null && res.Count>0 )
_session.SaveOrUpdate(target);
else
_session.Save(target);
transaction.Commit();
}
catch (Exception)
{
transaction.Rollback();
throw;
}
finally
{
transaction.Dispose();
}
}
but FindByExample method returns all objects alike not objects with the exact ID what do you suggest ? since I have only object as parameter I don't have access to its specific ID field so I cannot use session.get(Object.class(), id);
Typically, NHibernate can rely on the unsaved-value to determine whether it should insert or create the entity. However, since you are assigning the ID, to NHibernate it looks like your entity has already been persisted. Therefore, you need to rely on versioning your object to let NHibernate know that it is a new object. See the following link for how to version your entity:
http://web.archive.org/web/20090831032934/http://devlicio.us/blogs/mike_nichols/archive/2008/07/29/when-flushing-goes-bad-assigned-ids-in-nhibernate.aspx
Use the session.SaveOrUpdate(object) method.
You can do
Obj j = session.get(Object.class(), id);
if (j != null)
session.merge(myObj);
else
session.saveOrUpdate(myObj);
Query objects where keyword = x, take FirstOrDefault. If it's null, Add new object, if it exists, update object that you got and call saveOrUpdate on it.
This worked for me:
Implementation
public void InsertOrUpdate<TEntity, TId>(TEntity entity) where TEntity : IIdentificableNh<TId>
{
var anyy = session.Get<TEntity>(entity.Id);
if (anyy != null)
{
session.Evict(anyy); //dispatch all data loaded, to allow updating 'entity' object.
session.Update(entity);
}
else
{
session.Save(entity);
}
session.Flush();
}
Entity
public class Caracteristica : IIdentificableNh<int>
{
public virtual int Id { get; set; }
public virtual string Descripcion { get; set; }
}
I had to create an interface (IIdentificableNh) that allows me to access the Id property value.
Usage example:
session.InsertOrUpdate<Caracteristica, int>(new Caracteristica { Id = 2, Descripcion = "Caracteristica2" });
call hibernate.saveOrUpdate() which will check if the object is in the database, update it if it is, and save (i.e. insert) it if it is not.