I would like to override the default lazy loading behavior which is set in mappings as 'lazy=false'. Can't change it as many parts of existing application depend on this setting.
After spent some hours on it I didn't find a solution so I'm asking here.
How to do this?
What I want to achieve is to fine tune my query to load only what is needed.
This is what I've tried already:
Using QueryOver api:
var properties = session.QueryOver<Property>()
.Fetch(prop => prop.Transactions).Eager
.Fetch(prop => prop.Districts).Eager
//I dont want to load those entities below so I mark
//them as lazy - IT DOESN'T WORK
//I can see in SQL that they are getting loaded in separate queries
.Fetch(prop => prop.Districts.First().Aliases).Lazy
.Fetch(prop => prop.Districts.First().PolygonPoints).Lazy
.Skip(i * pageSize)
.Take(pageSize)
.List();
Using Criteria api:
var criteria = session.CreateCriteria<Property>();
criteria.SetFetchMode("Transactions", NHibernate.FetchMode.Join);
criteria.SetFetchMode("Districts", NHibernate.FetchMode.Join);
criteria.SetFetchMode("Districts.Aliases", NHibernate.FetchMode.Select); // tried Lazy too
criteria.SetFetchMode("Districts.PolygonPoints", NHibernate.FetchMode.Select); // tried Lazy too
criteria.AddOrder(NHibernate.Criterion.Order.Asc("Id"));
criteria.SetFirstResult(i * pageSize);
criteria.SetMaxResults(pageSize);
var properties = criteria.List<Property>();
Using any of the above methods 'Aliases' and 'PolygonPoints' are always being loaded when calling List<>(). I don't need them in my process.
I'm using Nhibernate 4.0.
Any ideas?
We cannot override mapping in this case. We can do it opposite way - have lazy in place - and use eager fetching for querying.
The decision process (of reference loading) is done outside of the query, ex post. So it could be pre-loaded, but cannot be avoided.
Solution here could be of two types.
The first is preferred (by me) - do your best and make laziness the default: Ayende -
NHibernate is lazy, just live with it
Use projections. Instruct NHibernate to create just one query, use transformer to get expected object graph - without any proxies in it
There is pretty clear example how to (properly) use projection list even for references:
Fluent NHibernate - ProjectionList - ICriteria is returning null values
And we would also need Custom result transformer, which will ex-post create all the references from the returned data:
Custom DeepResultTransfomer
While creating an app in Laravel 4 after reading T. Otwell's book on good design patterns in Laravel I found myself creating repositories for every table on the application.
I ended up with the following table structure:
Students: id, name
Courses: id, name, teacher_id
Teachers: id, name
Assignments: id, name, course_id
Scores (acts as a pivot between students and assignments): student_id, assignment_id, scores
I have repository classes with find, create, update and delete methods for all of these tables. Each repository has an Eloquent model which interacts with the database. Relationships are defined in the model per Laravel's documentation: http://laravel.com/docs/eloquent#relationships.
When creating a new course, all I do is calling the create method on the Course Repository. That course has assignments, so when creating one, I also want to create an entry in the score's table for each student in the course. I do this through the Assignment Repository. This implies the assignment repository communicates with two Eloquent models, with the Assignment and Student model.
My question is: as this app will probably grow in size and more relationships will be introduced, is it good practice to communicate with different Eloquent models in repositories or should this be done using other repositories instead (I mean calling other repositories from the Assignment repository) or should it be done in the Eloquent models all together?
Also, is it good practice to use the scores table as a pivot between assignments and students or should it be done somewhere else?
I am finishing up a large project using Laravel 4 and had to answer all of the questions you are asking right now. After reading all of the available Laravel books over at Leanpub, and tons of Googling, I came up with the following structure.
One Eloquent Model class per datable table
One Repository class per Eloquent Model
A Service class that may communicate between multiple Repository classes.
So let's say I'm building a movie database. I would have at least the following following Eloquent Model classes:
Movie
Studio
Director
Actor
Review
A repository class would encapsulate each Eloquent Model class and be responsible for CRUD operations on the database. The repository classes might look like this:
MovieRepository
StudioRepository
DirectorRepository
ActorRepository
ReviewRepository
Each repository class would extend a BaseRepository class which implements the following interface:
interface BaseRepositoryInterface
{
public function errors();
public function all(array $related = null);
public function get($id, array $related = null);
public function getWhere($column, $value, array $related = null);
public function getRecent($limit, array $related = null);
public function create(array $data);
public function update(array $data);
public function delete($id);
public function deleteWhere($column, $value);
}
A Service class is used to glue multiple repositories together and contains the real "business logic" of the application. Controllers only communicate with Service classes for Create, Update and Delete actions.
So when I want to create a new Movie record in the database, my MovieController class might have the following methods:
public function __construct(MovieRepositoryInterface $movieRepository, MovieServiceInterface $movieService)
{
$this->movieRepository = $movieRepository;
$this->movieService = $movieService;
}
public function postCreate()
{
if( ! $this->movieService->create(Input::all()))
{
return Redirect::back()->withErrors($this->movieService->errors())->withInput();
}
// New movie was saved successfully. Do whatever you need to do here.
}
It's up to you to determine how you POST data to your controllers, but let's say the data returned by Input::all() in the postCreate() method looks something like this:
$data = array(
'movie' => array(
'title' => 'Iron Eagle',
'year' => '1986',
'synopsis' => 'When Doug\'s father, an Air Force Pilot, is shot down by MiGs belonging to a radical Middle Eastern state, no one seems able to get him out. Doug finds Chappy, an Air Force Colonel who is intrigued by the idea of sending in two fighters piloted by himself and Doug to rescue Doug\'s father after bombing the MiG base.'
),
'actors' => array(
0 => 'Louis Gossett Jr.',
1 => 'Jason Gedrick',
2 => 'Larry B. Scott'
),
'director' => 'Sidney J. Furie',
'studio' => 'TriStar Pictures'
)
Since the MovieRepository shouldn't know how to create Actor, Director or Studio records in the database, we'll use our MovieService class, which might look something like this:
public function __construct(MovieRepositoryInterface $movieRepository, ActorRepositoryInterface $actorRepository, DirectorRepositoryInterface $directorRepository, StudioRepositoryInterface $studioRepository)
{
$this->movieRepository = $movieRepository;
$this->actorRepository = $actorRepository;
$this->directorRepository = $directorRepository;
$this->studioRepository = $studioRepository;
}
public function create(array $input)
{
$movieData = $input['movie'];
$actorsData = $input['actors'];
$directorData = $input['director'];
$studioData = $input['studio'];
// In a more complete example you would probably want to implement database transactions and perform input validation using the Laravel Validator class here.
// Create the new movie record
$movie = $this->movieRepository->create($movieData);
// Create the new actor records and associate them with the movie record
foreach($actors as $actor)
{
$actorModel = $this->actorRepository->create($actor);
$movie->actors()->save($actorModel);
}
// Create the director record and associate it with the movie record
$director = $this->directorRepository->create($directorData);
$director->movies()->associate($movie);
// Create the studio record and associate it with the movie record
$studio = $this->studioRepository->create($studioData);
$studio->movies()->associate($movie);
// Assume everything worked. In the real world you'll need to implement checks.
return true;
}
So what we're left with is a nice, sensible separation of concerns. Repositories are only aware of the Eloquent model they insert and retrieve from the database. Controllers don't care about repositories, they just hand off the data they collect from the user and pass it to the appropriate service. The service doesn't care how the data it receives is saved to the database, it just hands off the relevant data it was given by the controller to the appropriate repositories.
Keep in mind you're asking for opinions :D
Here's mine:
TL;DR: Yes, that's fine.
You're doing fine!
I do exactly what you are doing often and find it works great.
I often, however, organize repositories around business logic instead of having a repo-per-table. This is useful as it's a point of view centered around how your application should solve your "business problem".
A Course is a "entity", with attributes (title, id, etc) and even other entities (Assignments, which have their own attributes and possibly entities).
Your "Course" repository should be able to return a Course and the Courses' attributes/Assignments (including Assignment).
You can accomplish that with Eloquent, luckily.
(I often end up with a repository per table, but some repositories are used much more than others, and so have many more methods. Your "courses" repository may be much more full-featured than your Assignments repository, for instance, if your application centers more around Courses and less about a Courses' collection of Assignments).
The tricky part
I often use repositories inside of my repositories in order to do some database actions.
Any repository which implements Eloquent in order to handle data will likely return Eloquent models. In that light, it's fine if your Course model uses built-in relationships in order to retrieve or save Assignments (or any other use case). Our "implementation" is built around Eloquent.
From a practical point of view, this makes sense. We're unlikely to change data sources to something Eloquent can't handle (to a non-sql data source).
ORMS
The trickiest part of this setup, for me at least, is determing if Eloquent is actually helping or harming us. ORMs are a tricky subject, because while they help us greatly from a practical point of view, they also couple your "business logic entities" code with the code doing the data retrieval.
This sort of muddles up whether your repository's responsibility is actually for handling data or handling the retrieval / update of entities (business domain entities).
Furthermore, they act as the very objects you pass to your views. If you later have to get away from using Eloquent models in a repository, you'll need to make sure the variables passed to your views behave in the same way or have the same methods available, otherwise changing your data sources will roll into changing your views, and you've (partially) lost the purpose of abstracting your logic out to repositories in the first place - the maintainability of your project goes down as.
Anyway, these are somewhat incomplete thoughts. They are, as stated, merely my opinion, which happens to be the result of reading Domain Driven Design and watching videos like "uncle bob's" keynote at Ruby Midwest within the last year.
I like to think of it in terms of what my code is doing and what it is responsible for, rather than "right or wrong". This is how I break apart my responsibilities:
Controllers are the HTTP layer and route requests through to the underlying apis (aka, it controls the flow)
Models represent the database schema, and tell the application what the data looks like, what relationships it may have, as well as any global attributes that may be necessary (such as a name method for returning a concatenated first and last name)
Repositories represent the more complex queries and interactions with the models (I don't do any queries on model methods).
Search engines - classes that help me build complex search queries.
With this in mind, it makes sense every time to use a repository (whether you create interfaces.etc. is a whole other topic). I like this approach, because it means I know exactly where to go when I'm needing to do certain work.
I also tend to build a base repository, usually an abstract class which defines the main defaults - basically CRUD operations, and then each child can just extend and add methods as necessary, or overload the defaults. Injecting your model also helps this pattern to be quite robust.
Think of Repositories as a consistent filing cabinet of your data (not just your ORMs). The idea is that you want to grab data in a consistent simple to use API.
If you find yourself just doing Model::all(), Model::find(), Model::create() you probably won't benefit much from abstracting away a repository. On the other hand, if you want to do a bit more business logic to your queries or actions, you may want to create a repository to make an easier to use API for dealing with data.
I think you were asking if a repository would be the best way to deal with some of the more verbose syntax required to connect related models. Depending on the situation, there are a few things I may do:
Hanging a new child model off of a parent model (one-one or one-many), I would add a method to the child repository something like createWithParent($attributes, $parentModelInstance) and this would just add the $parentModelInstance->id into the parent_id field of the attributes and call create.
Attaching a many-many relationship, I actually create functions on the models so that I can run $instance->attachChild($childInstance). Note that this requires existing elements on both side.
Creating related models in one run, I create something that I call a Gateway (it may be a bit off from Fowler's definitions). Way I can call $gateway->createParentAndChild($parentAttributes, $childAttributes) instead of a bunch of logic that may change or that would complicate the logic that I have in a controller or command.
All,
I have a requirement to hide my EF implementation behind a Repository. My simple question: Is there a way to execute a 'find' across both a DbSet AND the DbSet.Local without having to deal with them both.
For example - I have standard repository implementation with Add/Update/Remove/FindById. I break the generic pattern by adding a FindByName method (for demo purposes only :). This gives me the following code:
Client App:
ProductCategoryRepository categoryRepository = new ProductCategoryRepository();
categoryRepository.Add(new ProductCategory { Name = "N" });
var category1 = categoryRepository.FindByName("N");
Implementation
public ProductCategory FindByName(string s)
{
// Assume name is unique for demo
return _legoContext.Categories.Where(c => c.Name == s).SingleOrDefault();
}
In this example, category1 is null.
However, if I implement the FindByName method as:
public ProductCategory FindByName(string s)
{
var t = _legoContext.Categories.Local.Where(c => c.Name == s).SingleOrDefault();
if (t == null)
{
t = _legoContext.Categories.Where(c => c.Name == s).SingleOrDefault();
}
return t;
}
In this case, I get what I expect when querying against both a new entry and one that is only in the database. But this presents a few issues that I am confused over:
1) I would assume (as a user of the repository) that cat2 below is not found. But it is found, and the great part is that cat2.Name is "Goober".
ProductCategoryRepository categoryRepository = new ProductCategoryRepository();
var cat = categoryRepository.FindByName("Technic");
cat.Name = "Goober";
var cat2 = categoryRepository.FindByName("Technic");
2) I would like to return a generic IQueryable from my repository.
It just seems like a lot of work to wrap the calls to the DbSet in a repository. Typically, this means that I've screwed something up. I'd appreciate any insight.
With older versions of EF you had very complicated situations that could arise quite fast due to the required references. In this version I would recomend not exposing IQueryable but ICollections or ILists. This will contain EF in your repository and create a good seperation.
Edit: furthermore, by sending back ICollection IEnumerable or IList you are restraining and controlling the queries being sent to the database. This will also allow you to fine tune and maintain the system with greater ease. By exposing IQueriable, you are exposing yourself to side affects which occur when people add more to the query, .Take() or .Where ... .SelectMany, EF will see these additions and will generate sql to reflect these uncontrolled queries. Not confining the queries can result in queries getting executed from the UI and is more complicated tests and maintenance issues in the long run.
since the point of the repository pattern is to be able to swap them out at will. the details of DbSets should be completly hidden.
I think that you're on a good path. The only thing I probaly ask my self is :
Is the context long lived? if not then do not worry about querying Local. An object that has been Inserted / Deleted should only be accessible once it has been comitted.
if this is a long lived context and you need access to deleted and inserted objects then querying the Local is a good idea, but as you've pointed out, you may run into difficulties at some point.
I couldn't find an answer to this issue so I assume it is something I am doing wrong.
I have a PersistenceModel set up where I have set a convention as follows: -
persistenceModel.Conventions.Add(DefaultLazy.Always());
However, for one of the HasManyToMany relationships in one of my entities I want eager loading to take place which I am setting up as follows: -
HasManyToMany(x => x.Affiliates).Not.LazyLoad();
Intuitively, I expect eager loading to take place as I am overriding the lazy load default that I have specified as a convention but it still lazy loads. If I set the DefaultLazy convention to never and then set LazyLoad on an individual relationship it doesn't work either.
Any ideas?
When you set Not.LazyLoad(), you tell NHibernate to load Affiliates when the parent loads. NHibernate will do this by performing another select on the Affliates many-to-many table regardless of whether you access the Affiliates collection or not. NHibernate is using another select because that is the default fetching mode. You want to override fetching mode as well, either in the query or in the mapping. To do it in the mapping, add the following:
HasManyToMany(x => x.Affiliates)
.Not.LazyLoad()
.Fetch.Join();
You might also want to include a ".Cascade.AllDeleteOrphan()" if you want NHibernate to persist new Affiliaites added to the collection and delete orphaned ones. If you do not do this, you will have to explicitly call session.Save(newAffiliate). Otherwise you'll receive a TransientObjectException when your Affiliates collection contains a new Affiliate.
It may be one stupid thing to ask, but have you execute the query inside your session? Say,
Using(var session = OpenSession())
{
session.Query<Entity>().ToList();
}
I had this problem before, and finally realized the objects that I was accessing hadn't been queried before disposing the session.
Suppose I have a class Customer that is mapped to the database and everything is a-ok.
Now suppose that I want to retrieve - in my application - the column name that NH knows Customer.FirstName maps to.
How would I do this?
You can access the database field name through NHibernate.Cfg.Configuration:
// cfg is NHibernate.Cfg.Configuration
// You will have to provide the complete namespace for Customer
var persistentClass = cfg.GetClassMapping(typeof(Customer));
var property = persistentClass.GetProperty("FirstName");
var columnIterator = property.ColumnIterator;
The ColumnIterator property returns IEnumerable<NHibernate.Mapping.ISelectable>. In almost all cases properties are mapped to a single column so the column name can be found using property.ColumnInterator.ElementAt(0).Text.
I'm not aware that that's doable.
I believe your best bet would be to use .xml files to do the mapping, package them together with the application and read the contents at runtime. I am not aware of an API which allows you to query hibernate annotations (pardon the Java lingo) at runtime, and that's what you would need.
Update:
Judging by Jamie's solution, NHibernate and Hibernate have different APIs, because the Hibernate org.hibernate.Hibernate class provides no way to access a "configuration" property.