I have a class called Entry. This class as a collection of strings called TopicsOfInterest. In my database, TopicsOfInterest is represented by a separate table since it is there is a one-to-many relationship between entries and their topics of interest. I'd like to use nhibernate to populate this collection, but since the table stores very little (only an entry id and a string), I was hoping I could somehow bypass the creation of a class to represent it and all that goes with (mappings, configuration, etc..)
Is this possible, and if so, how? I'm using Fluent Nhibernate, so something specific to that would be even more helpful.
public class Entry
{
private readonly IList<string> topicsOfInterest;
public Entry()
{
topicsOfInterest = new List<string>();
}
public virtual int Id { get; set; }
public virtual IEnumerable<string> TopicsOfInterest
{
get { return topicsOfInterest; }
}
}
public class EntryMapping : ClassMap<Entry>
{
public EntryMapping()
{
Id(entry => entry.Id);
HasMany(entry => entry.TopicsOfInterest)
.Table("TableName")
.AsList()
.Element("ColumnName")
.Cascade.All()
.Access.CamelCaseField();
}
}
I had a similar requirement to map a collection of floats.
I'm using Automapping to generate my entire relational model - you imply that you already have some tables, so this may not apply, unless you choose to switch to an Automapping approach.
Turns out that NHibernate will NOT Automap collections of basic types - you need an override.
See my answer to my own question How do you automap List or float[] with Fluent NHibernate?.
I've provided a lot of sample code - you should be able to substitute "string" for "float", and get it working. Note the gotchas in the explanatory text.
Related
This is a sample from the Fluent NHibernate website:
Compared to the Entitiy Framework I have ADD methods in my POCO in this code sample using NHibernate. With the EF I did context.Add or context.AddObject etc... the context had the methods to put one entity into the others entity collection!
Do I really have to implement Add/Delete/Update methods (I do not mean the real database CRUD operations!) in a NHibernate entity ?
public class Store
{
public virtual int Id { get; private set; }
public virtual string Name { get; set; }
public virtual IList<Product> Products { get; set; }
public virtual IList<Employee> Staff { get; set; }
public Store()
{
Products = new List<Product>();
Staff = new List<Employee>();
}
public virtual void AddProduct(Product product)
{
product.StoresStockedIn.Add(this);
Products.Add(product);
}
public virtual void AddEmployee(Employee employee)
{
employee.Store = this;
Staff.Add(employee);
}
}
You don't have to do this for nhibernate, you have to do this for keep in-memory consistence and not repeat yourself.
Consistence in memory
If you have a two way relationship, lets say Order has Lines, and Line as a relationship to order. You don't want to have a reference from one side and not from the other.
If you just do:
order.Lines.Add(line);
You have made a reference from Order to Line, but Line.Order property remains null. So your in-memory instances are not consistent.
Don't Repeat Yourself
You can use the following code :
order.Lines.Add(line);
line.Order = order;
but you will be repeating yourself, so it is better to put this code in only one place, and the best place is as order.AddLine(..).
You don't have to. You could just call SomeStore.Products.Add(someProduct) directly from outside of your entity. But it's often good practice to make the collections 'read-only' from a public perspective, and using an add method in the entity for adding items.
One benefit of this is that you can put additional logic in there. For instance in your store example, you could set a 'storesStockedIn' collection (if there was such a thing) in the same method, and so keep all the logic about to creating that relationship in one place.
This isn't really a NHibernate thing, but rather an OOP thing. (Although I'm not familiar with EF - maybe it automates some of this for you). The design decisions are exactly the same as if it was just an unpersisted poco (without NHibernate).
I have a class which I would like to map as a component onto any table which contains it:
public class Time
{
public int Hours { get; set; }
public int Minutes { get; set; }
public int Seconds { get; set; }
}
I would like to store this class as a bigint in the database - the same as how TimeSpan is stored but my class has completely different behaviour so I decided to create my own.
I'm using FLH's automapper and have this class set as a component (other classes have Time as a property). I've got as far as creating an override but am not sure how to go about mapping it:
I gave it a try this way:
public class TimeMappingOverride : IAutoMappingOverride<Time>
{
public void Override(AutoMapping<Time> mapping)
{
mapping.Map(x => x.ToTimeSpan());
mapping.IgnoreProperty(x => x.Hours);
mapping.IgnoreProperty(x => x.Minutes);
mapping.IgnoreProperty(x => x.Seconds);
}
}
But got this error:
Unable to cast object of type 'System.Linq.Expressions.UnaryExpression' to type 'System.Linq.Expressions.MethodCallExpression'.
How should I go about this?
Details of components can be found here: http://wiki.fluentnhibernate.org/Fluent_mapping#Components
But first of all, you can't map a method.
Assuming you change ToTimeSpan() to a property AsTimeSpan, there are two ways to do it, only the harder of which will work for you because you are using automapping:
Create a ComponentMap<Time> -- once done, your existing mapping will just work. This is not compatible with automapping.
Declare the component mapping inline:
mapping.Component(x => x.AsTimeSpan, component => {
component.Map(Hours);
component.Map(Minutes);
component.Map(Seconds);
});
You'll have to do this every time, though.
Of course, this doesn't address "I would like to store this class as bigint…"
Are you saying you want to persist it as seconds only? If so, scratch everything at the top and again you have two options:
Implement NHibernate IUserType (ugh)
Create a private property or field that stores the value as seconds only, and wire only this up to NHibernate. The getters and setters of the pubic properties will have to convert to/from seconds.
I personally haven't worked with AutoMappings yet, but my suggestion would be to look into NHibernate's IUserType to change how a type is being persisted. I believe that's a cleaner way of defining your custom mapping of Time <-> bigint.
Reading the code above, Map(x => x.ToTimeSpan()) will not work as you cannot embed application-to-database transformation code into your mappings. Even if that would be possible, the declaration misses the transformation from the database to the application. A IUserType, on the other hand, can do custom transformations in the NullSafeGet and NullSafeSet methods.
I've found a number of posts about this but none seem to help me directly. Also there seems to be confusion about solutions working or not working during different stages of FluentNHibernate's development.
I have the following classes:
public class MappedClass
{
...
}
public enum MyEnum
{
One,
Two
}
public class Foo
{
...
public virtual IDictionary<MappedClass, MyEnum> Values { get; set; }
}
My questions are:
Will I need a separate (third) table of MyEnum?
How can I map the MyEnum type? Should I?
What should Foo's mapping look like?
I've tried mapping HasMany(x => x.Values).AsMap("MappedClass")...
This results in: NHibernate.MappingException : Association references unmapped class: MyEnum
It looks like this questions is a duplicate of Fluent code for mapping an IDictionary<SomeEntity, int>?. The solution was to use hbm.xml to map a ternary association table. It looks like at the time FluentNHibernate's AsTernaryAssocation() method only worked for entity types. I can't tell if this has changed, or if it is a planned feature.
Having successfully gotten a sample program working, I'm now starting
to do Real Work with Fluent NHibernate - trying to use Automapping on my project's class
heirarchy.
It's a scientific instrumentation application, and the classes I'm
mapping have several properties that are arrays of floats e.g.
private float[] _rawY;
public virtual float[] RawY
{
get
{
return _rawY;
}
set
{
_rawY = value;
}
}
These arrays can contain a maximum of 500 values.
I didn't expect Automapping to work on arrays, but tried it anyway,
with some success at first. Each array was auto mapped to a BLOB
(using SQLite), which seemed like a viable solution.
The first problem came when I tried to call SaveOrUpdate on the
objects containing the arrays - I got "No persister for float[]"
exceptions.
So my next thought was to convert all my arrays into ILists e.g.
public virtual IList<float> RawY { get; set; }
But now I get:
NHibernate.MappingException: Association references unmapped class: System.Single
Since Automapping can deal with lists of complex objects, it never
occured to me it would not be able to map lists of basic types. But
after doing some Googling for a solution, this seems to be the case.
Some people seem to have solved the problem, but the sample code I
saw requires more knowledge of NHibernate than I have right now - I
didn't understand it.
Questions:
1. How can I make this work with Automapping?
2. Also, is it better to use arrays or lists for this application?
I can modify my app to use either if necessary (though I prefer
lists).
Edit:
I've studied the code in Mapping Collection of Strings, and I see there is test code in the source that sets up an IList of strings, e.g.
public virtual IList<string> ListOfSimpleChildren { get; set; }
[Test]
public void CanSetAsElement()
{
new MappingTester<OneToManyTarget>()
.ForMapping(m => m.HasMany(x => x.ListOfSimpleChildren).Element("columnName"))
.Element("class/bag/element").Exists();
}
so this must be possible using pure Automapping, but I've had zero luck getting anything to work, probably because I don't have the requisite knowlege of manually mapping with NHibernate.
Starting to think I'm going to have to hack this (by encoding the array of floats as a single string, or creating a class that contains a single float which I then aggregate into my lists), unless someone can tell me how to do it properly.
End Edit
Here's my CreateSessionFactory method, if that helps formulate a
reply...
private static ISessionFactory CreateSessionFactory()
{
ISessionFactory sessionFactory = null;
const string autoMapExportDir = "AutoMapExport";
if( !Directory.Exists(autoMapExportDir) )
Directory.CreateDirectory(autoMapExportDir);
try
{
var autoPersistenceModel =
AutoMap.AssemblyOf<DlsAppOverlordExportRunData>()
.Where(t => t.Namespace == "DlsAppAutomapped")
.Conventions.Add( DefaultCascade.All() )
;
sessionFactory = Fluently.Configure()
.Database(SQLiteConfiguration.Standard
.UsingFile(DbFile)
.ShowSql()
)
.Mappings(m => m.AutoMappings.Add(autoPersistenceModel)
.ExportTo(autoMapExportDir)
)
.ExposeConfiguration(BuildSchema)
.BuildSessionFactory()
;
}
catch (Exception e)
{
Debug.WriteLine(e);
}
return sessionFactory;
}
I would probably do a one to many relationship and make the list another table...
But maybe you need to rethink your object, is there also a RawX that you could compose into a RawPoint? This would make a table with 3 columns (ParentID, X, Y).
The discontinuity comes from wanting to map a List to a value that in an RDBMS won't go in a column very neatly. A table is really the method that they use to store Lists of data.
This is the whole point of using an ORM like NHibernate. When doing all the querying and SQL composition by hand in your application, adding a table had a high cost in maintenance and implementation. With NHibernate the cost is nearly 0, so take advantage of the strengths of the RDBMS and let NHibernate abstract the ugliness away.
I see your problem with mapping the array, try it with an override mapping first and see if it will work, then you could maybe create a convention override if you want the automap to work.
.Override<MyType>(map =>
{
map.HasMany(x => x.RawY).AsList();
})
Not sure if that will work, I need to get an nHibernate testing setup configured for this stuff.
Since I posted my question, the Fluent NHibernate team have fixed this problem.
You can now automap ILists of C# value types (strings, ints, floats, etc).
Just make sure you have a recent version of FNH.
Edit
I recently upgraded from FNH 1.0 to FNH 1.3.
This version will also automap arrays - float[], int[], etc.
Seems to map them as BLOBs. I assume this will be more efficient than ILists, but have not done any profiling to confirm.
I eventually got an override to work - see the end of the code listing. The key points are:
a new mapping class called DlsAppOverlordExportRunDataMap
the addition of a UseOverridesFromAssemblyOf clause in
CreateSessionFactory
Also, it turns out that (at least with v. 1.0.0.594) there is a very big gotcha with Automapping - the mapping class (e.g. DlsAppOverlordExportRunDataMap) cannot be in the same Namespace as the domain class (e.g. DlsAppOverlordExportRunData)!
Otherwise, NHibernate will throw "NHibernate.MappingException: (XmlDocument)(2,4): XML validation error: ..." , with absolutely no indication of what or where the real problem is.
This is probably a bug, and may be fixed in later versions of Fluent NHibernate.
namespace DlsAppAutomapped
{
public class DlsAppOverlordExportRunData
{
public virtual int Id { get; set; }
// Note: List<float> needs overrides in order to be mapped by NHibernate.
// See class DlsAppOverlordExportRunDataMap.
public virtual IList<float> RawY { get; set; }
}
}
namespace FrontEnd
{
// NEW - SET UP THE OVERRIDES
// Must be in different namespace from DlsAppOverlordExportRunData!!!
public class DlsAppOverlordExportRunDataMap : IAutoMappingOverride<DlsAppOverlordExportRunData>
{
public void Override(AutoMapping<DlsAppOverlordExportRunData> mapping)
{
// Creates table called "RawY", with primary key
// "DlsAppOverlordExportRunData_Id", and numeric column "Value"
mapping.HasMany(x => x.RawY)
.Element("Value");
}
}
}
private static ISessionFactory CreateSessionFactory()
{
ISessionFactory sessionFactory = null;
const string autoMapExportDir = "AutoMapExport";
if( !Directory.Exists(autoMapExportDir) )
Directory.CreateDirectory(autoMapExportDir);
try
{
var autoPersistenceModel =
AutoMap.AssemblyOf<DlsAppOverlordExportRunData>()
.Where(t => t.Namespace == "DlsAppAutomapped")
// NEW - USE THE OVERRIDES
.UseOverridesFromAssemblyOf<DlsAppOverlordExportRunData>()
.Conventions.Add( DefaultCascade.All() )
;
sessionFactory = Fluently.Configure()
.Database(SQLiteConfiguration.Standard
.UsingFile(DbFile)
.ShowSql()
)
.Mappings(m => m.AutoMappings.Add(autoPersistenceModel)
.ExportTo(autoMapExportDir)
)
.ExposeConfiguration(BuildSchema)
.BuildSessionFactory()
;
}
catch (Exception e)
{
Debug.WriteLine(e);
}
return sessionFactory;
}
Didn't get any answers here or on the Fluent NHibernate mailing list that actually worked, so here's what I did.
It smells like a horrible hack, but it works. (Whether it will scale up to large data sets remains to be seen).
First, I wrapped a float property (called Value) in a class:
// Hack - need to embed simple types in a class before NHibernate
// will map them
public class MappableFloat
{
public virtual int Id { get; private set; }
public virtual float Value { get; set; }
}
I then declare the properties in other classes that need to be Lists of floats e.g.
public virtual IList<MappableFloat> RawYMappable { get; set; }
NHibernate creates a single database table, with multiple foreign keys, e.g.
create table "MappableFloat" (
Id integer,
Value NUMERIC,
DlsAppOverlordExportRunData_Id INTEGER,
DlsAppOverlordExportData_Id INTEGER,
primary key (Id)
)
Is it possible to generate table indexes along with the rest of the database schema with Fluent NHibernate? I would like to be able to generate the complete database DDL via an automated build process.
In more recent versions of Fluent NHibernate, you can call the Index() method to do this rather than using SetAttribute (which no longer exists):
Map(x => x.Prop1).Index("idx__Prop1");
Do you mean indexes on columns?
You can do it manually in your ClassMap<...> files by appending .SetAttribute("index", "nameOfMyIndex"), e.g. like so:
Map(c => c.FirstName).SetAttribute("index", "idx__firstname");
or you can do it by using the attribute features of the automapper - e.g. like so:
After having created your persistence model:
{
var model = new AutoPersistenceModel
{
(...)
}
model.Conventions.ForAttribute<IndexedAttribute>(ApplyIndex);
}
void ApplyIndex(IndexedAttribute attr, IProperty info)
{
info.SetAttribute("index", "idx__" + info.Property.Name");
}
and then do this to your entities:
[Indexed]
public virtual string FirstName { get; set; }
I like the latter. Is is a good compromise between not being non-instrusive to your domain model, yet still being very effective and clear on what is happening.
Mookid's answer is great and helped me a lot, but meanwhile the ever evolving Fluent NHibernate API has changed.
So, the right way to write mookid sample now is the following:
//...
model.ConventionDiscovery.Setup(s =>
{
s.Add<IndexedPropertyConvention>();
//other conventions to add...
});
where IndexedPropertyConvention is the following:
public class IndexedPropertyConvention : AttributePropertyConvention<IndexedAttribute>
{
protected override void Apply(IndexedAttribute attribute, IProperty target)
{
target.SetAttribute("index", "idx__" + target.Property.Name);
}
}
The [Indexed] attribute works the same way now.