Patrick Cauldwell's Blog

Using MEF for extensible XML processing

Patrick Cauldwell — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 21:32:51 GMT

It’s not uncommon to want to dynamically add new sections to an XML file, such as a config file, without having to recompile existing code for processing said XML file. One common example is the way that .NET’s app.config file supports a config section / config section handler model. You can add new arbitrary XML that is specific to a particular bit of code in its schema, then register a “handler” for that config section so that the standard System.Configuration classes can read and deal with that otherwise unknown schema.

Rather then explicitly registering “handlers” in the XML file itself, we can use the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF), which is now a fully baked part of the .NET 4 framework.

Let’s say I start off with a configuration file that looks like this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
  <products>
    <product name="Product1">
      <P1Config>
        <secretP1Value>42</secretP1Value>
      </P1Config>
    </product>
    <product name="Product2">
      <Product2Config>
        <installedFeatures>
          <feature id="1"/>
          <feature id="36"/>
        </installedFeatures>
      </Product2Config>
    </product>
  </products>
</configuration>

I want to be able to add new <product> sections in the future which will contain XML that only that particular product’s plugin will know what to do with.

MEF is all about the “plugin” pattern. It allows me to declare “Exported” contracts that plugins essentially publish for use, and to declare that other components “Import” those plugins, meaning they require a runtime instance of one or more of those published exports. For the sake of the above example, I’ve defined an interface that each product plugin will need to support to process the XML from its config section.

interface IProductPlugin
{
    bool Configure(XElement config);
}

When the overall XML file is processed, an instance of each product’s plugin will be instantiated and “fed” the XElement that represents its config section. MEF makes it easy to choose which plugin gets loaded for each section using named contracts. The following two plugins

[Export("Product1", typeof(IProductPlugin))]
public class ProductOnePlugin : IProductPlugin
{
    public bool Configure(XElement config)
    {
        var secret = from el in config.Descendants()
                     where el.Name == "secretP1Value"
                     select el.Value;

        Debug.WriteLine(secret.FirstOrDefault());

        return true;
    }
}

[Export("Product2", typeof(IProductPlugin))]
public class ProductTwoPlugin : IProductPlugin
{
    public bool Configure(XElement config)
    {
        var installed = from el in config.Descendants()
                        where el.Name == "feature"
                        select el.Attribute("id").Value;

        foreach (var off in installed)
        {
            Debug.WriteLine(off);
        }

        return true;
    }
}

both export the IProductPlugin interface, but they also declare a name under which it will be exported. We can use a corresponding “name” attribute in the <product> element of each section to get the right plugin. At runtime, the code to load the file reads each product element and instantiates the right plugin by asking MEF for the named instance from MEF’s catalog.

XDocument top = XDocument.Load(s);
var products = from product in top.Root.Element("products").Elements()
               select product;

foreach (var prod in products)
{
    string name = prod.Attribute("name").Value;
    var plugin = _container.GetExport<IProductPlugin>(name);
    plugin.Value.Configure(prod);
}

The key in this case is the GetExport method. It optionally takes that arbitrary string and tries to find the right instance from the catalog. In this particular case, for the sake of simplicity, the catalog is loaded from the running assembly.

_container = new CompositionContainer(new AssemblyCatalog(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly()));
_container.ComposeParts(this);

In practice, I would use the DirectoryCatalog class to build the catalog from all the assemblies in one directory, which would allow new plugin assemblies to be simply dropped into place without anything needing to be compiled.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

Intro to Windows Workflow 4

Patrick Cauldwell — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 16:40:47 GMT

I’ll be speaking at PADNUG next Tuesday about the wonders of WF 4 and how to apply it to real world problems. We’ll look at what problems WF solves, when it might be appropriate, and how to get started building your own workflows. We’ll also look at using WF/WCF integration to create “declarative services” or “workflow services” quickly and easily.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

Change of scene

Patrick Cauldwell — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 18:30:54 GMT

As of this week, I’m now working at WebMD Health Service in NW Portland. I’m looking forward to working with the very smart people here, and learning about the latest in ASP.NET and Agile development in the enterprise.

More information to follow as the situation warrants.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

Default button semantics in Silverlight, once more

Patrick Cauldwell — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:00:05 GMT

A while back I posted a revision to my original default button sample that made it a bit easier to use, but there was still an issue... If you invoke the button while the focus is still in a text box, any changes made to the text in the text box may not get pushed into the databinding source, since by default that happens when the text box loses focus. I didn't come up with a good solution, but luckily somebody did. :) I got the following revision from Glenn Orr, and this should solve the problem. If you have any custom data entry controls, etc. you may have to add additional clauses to handle them, but this will work with text boxes for sure.

Change the OnKeyUp method to look like this...

private void OnKeyUp(object sender, KeyEventArgs arg)
{
	  if (arg.Key == Key.Enter)
			  if (peer != null)
			   {
					   if (sender is TextBox)
					  {
							   BindingExpression expression = (sender as TextBox).GetBindingExpression(TextBox.TextProperty);
							   expression.UpdateSource();
					  }
					  ((IInvokeProvider)peer).Invoke();
			  }
}

This will make sure that any changes get pushed into the databinding source before the button is invoked. Thanks Glenn!

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

Code Camp sample app

Patrick Cauldwell — Mon, 24 May 2010 03:26:25 GMT

The sample app I used for my Code Camp presentation is here. I’ll post details about the sample later in the week.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

WPF 4: breaking change between RC and Release

Patrick Cauldwell — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:02:03 GMT

While I guess I understand why this would be a problem, I don’t understand why it worked before…

If I want to create a style for a button, let’s say with a red background, I might create a brush resource that defines my special color of red, then reference that brush in a style resource like so

<SolidColorBrush x:Key="TheBrush">
    <SolidColorBrush.Color>Red</SolidColorBrush.Color>
</SolidColorBrush>            
<Style x:Key="RedButton" TargetType="Button">
    <Setter Property="Background" Value="{StaticResource TheBrush}"/>
</Style>

That works just fine. I get a red button like this

If the two resources are in the opposite order

<Style x:Key="RedButton" TargetType="Button">
    <Setter Property="Background" Value="{StaticResource TheBrush}"/>
</Style>
<SolidColorBrush x:Key="TheBrush">
    <SolidColorBrush.Color>Red</SolidColorBrush.Color>
</SolidColorBrush>

then at runtime I’m going to end up with an exception because the resource “TheBrush” can’t be found. Hmmm. I suppose that makes sense if we imagine the XAML processor instancing objects as it comes to them in the XZML file. It would try to instance “RedButton” and not be able to create the static reference to “TheBrush” because that object hasn’t been instanced yet.

If I happen to apply that style some something in my XAML

<Button 
    Style="{StaticResource RedButton}" 
    Content="Red Button" Height="23"
    Click="button1_Click" />

I’ll get a compile error. OK. If, however, the reference to “RedButton” is in something like a DataTemplate that doesn’t get applied until runtime, then I get a rather jarring runtime exception instead.

Again, I suppose this behavior makes sense given my theoretical model of the XAML processor (though it smacks of C++-ishness). What doesn’t make sense is why it worked just fine in the RC, and just recompiling in the release of VS 2010 I now get runtime exceptions. Something obviously changed in the way resources are loaded and/or referenced at runtime.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

Workflow 4 Activity instances may be reused

Patrick Cauldwell — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:14:40 GMT

We just caught this one this morning… It looks like WF 4 reuses activity instances across workflow instances. So if I have a WorkflowService that’s hosted in IIS, and I call it from two different client threads at the same time, the two workflow instances now running on the server may be using the same activity instances for child activities. The documentation is not clear on this point, but that’s the behavior we observed.

The implication is that you have to treat calls to your Activity’s Execute method as stateless, and not maintain any state in your activity between calls to Execute. (Our specific problem was around EntityFramework containers. Apparently they don’t like being called on multiple threads. :) )

Makes sense, but it’s not clear at all from the documentation that it would be the case. You can rely on the thread safety of your InArguments and OutArguments, since they are accessed through the context, but private fields are right out unless whatever you store in them is also threadsafe.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

Unity and WorkflowServices hosted in IIS

Patrick Cauldwell — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 01:03:13 GMT

This is probably one of those things that is obvious to everyone but me, but just in case it’s not…

We’re using Unity as our IoC container, and we are also using .NET 4 Workflow Services hosted in IIS, meaning .xamlx files that are served up by IIS 7. In order to get full value out of Unity, we need one instance of the Unity container that gets properly configured somewhere that is then available to any WF activity that might need to resolve a reference. But…since IIS is hosting, there’s no direct access to the WorkflowServiceHost to add the Unity container as an extension (which is how we do it in places where we are hosting using WorkflowApplication in WPF apps, etc.). I suspected that the solution was a WCF Service Behavior extension, because that’s how you set up a tracking participant if you are hosted in IIS, and luckily that turned out to be the case. I’d been putting off nailing it down because I suspected it was hard, but as luck would have it (or, rather, the cleverness of the ServiceModel team) it’s not hard at all.

First, we need a behavior extension that creates (and ultimately configures) the Unity container. It has to implement IServiceBehavior, since we need it to be a service behavior to get access to the host.

public class UnityServiceBehavior : IServiceBehavior
{

    #region IServiceBehavior Members

    public void AddBindingParameters(ServiceDescription serviceDescription, System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostBase serviceHostBase, System.Collections.ObjectModel.Collection<ServiceEndpoint> endpoints, System.ServiceModel.Channels.BindingParameterCollection bindingParameters)
    {
        
    }

    public void ApplyDispatchBehavior(ServiceDescription serviceDescription, System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostBase serviceHostBase)
    {
         WorkflowServiceHost host = serviceHostBase as WorkflowServiceHost;
         if (host != null)
         {
             IUnityContainer container = new UnityContainer();
             host.WorkflowExtensions.Add<IUnityContainer>(delegate { return container; });
         }
   
    }

    public void Validate(ServiceDescription serviceDescription, System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostBase serviceHostBase)
    {
        
    }

    #endregion
}

Secondly, we want it to be configurable through web.config, which calls for a BehaviorExtensionElement.

public class UnityBehaviorElementExtension : BehaviorExtensionElement
{
    public override Type BehaviorType
    {
        get { return typeof(UnityServiceBehavior); }
    }

    protected override object CreateBehavior()
    {
        return new UnityServiceBehavior();
    }
}

Then, in our web.config, just register the extension, which in turn will configure and return behavior.

<system.serviceModel>
  <behaviors>
    <serviceBehaviors>
      <behavior>
        <!-- To avoid disclosing metadata information, set the value below to false and remove the metadata endpoint above before deployment -->
        <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/>
        <!-- To receive exception details in faults for debugging purposes, set the value below to true.  Set to false before deployment to avoid disclosing exception information -->
        <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false"/>
        <unityExtension/>
      </behavior>
    </serviceBehaviors>
  </behaviors>
  <extensions>
    <behaviorExtensions>
      <add name="unityExtension" type="UnityBehavior.UnityBehaviorElementExtension, UnityBehavior, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null"/>
    </behaviorExtensions>
  </extensions>
  <serviceHostingEnvironment multipleSiteBindingsEnabled="true" />
</system.serviceModel>

In this case, the fact that the behavior element doesn’t include a name means the set of behaviors it contains will be applied to any WCF service that is relying on the default configuration (one of the coolest things in .NET 4!) which is how our .xamlx file works in this example.

Once all that’s done, from any activity in my .xamlx workflow I can access the IUnityContainer interface as an extension.

public sealed class CheckForUnity : CodeActivity
{
    // Define an activity input argument of type string
    public OutArgument<bool> HasUnity { get; set; }

    // If your activity returns a value, derive from CodeActivity<TResult>
    // and return the value from the Execute method.
    protected override void Execute(CodeActivityContext context)
    {
        IUnityContainer container = context.GetExtension<IUnityContainer>();

        context.SetValue<bool>(HasUnity, (container != null));
    }
}

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

Feedburner URL changes causing problems, working on it…

Patrick Cauldwell — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:51:04 GMT

Feedburner has apparently started decorating the URLs they embed to link back to my full posts, which is causing my decrepit version of dasBlog to yak up 404’s. I’m working on it now, and apologize for the inconvenience.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

WIF + VS 2010 + Win 7

Patrick Cauldwell — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:16:05 GMT

Just in case someone is googling (binging?) this later…

If you are running Visual Studio 2010 (Beta 2) on Windows 7, and you want to create a Windows Identity Foundation STS or relying party application, you need to run VS as an administrator, or it won’t create the project correctly. I suspect it’s because it’s trying to install a cert, but there is some other stuff that fails too, probably as a result. Once I ran VS as an admin, it all works fine.

And, just for the record, WIF is awesome! I’ve build an STS and relying app by hand for WCF 3, and this is SOOOOO much easier. Excellent work guys!

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

Encrypting workflow instance data

Patrick Cauldwell — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:30:39 GMT

I’m trying to get a handle on WF 4 (which is awesome, BTW) and currently working on persistence. We have a need to encrypt the workflow instance data, and it took me quite some time to figure out how that might best be done. The biggest drawback to working with WF 4 right now is that the documentation is pretty lame. There are very few samples, and beta 2 hasn’t been around long enough to generate the “this is how you solve that problem” blog posts we’ve all come to depend upon. I looked at PersistenceParticipant, but couldn’t see a good way to make that do what I wanted, then a bunch more time trying to figure out what was going on in the SqlWorkflowInstanceStore, etc.

I think I’ve got a workable solution, although I’ve yet to actually try it out. Turns out that the SqlWorkflowInstanceStore keeps all that good data in varbinary(MAX) columns, and only messes with them via a set of stored procs that get created when you create the instance store schema. It should be an easy thing to modify said stored procs to use native SQL 2005/2008 column level encryption, without having to change the schema at all.

I’ll let you know if it works…

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

Can't reference System.ServiceModel.Web from WCF Library project

Patrick Cauldwell — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:23:57 GMT

This one stumped me for a bit today, so I wanted to get it out there for the search engines to find... I created a new WCF Service Library project in VS 2010, taking all the defaults and targeting .NET 4.0. I needed to add a [WebGet] attribute so that I could make REST calls to the service. To do that, you need a reference to System.ServiceModel.Web.dll. It didn't show up on the list of .NET references in the Add Reference... dialog. OK, weird. So then I tracked down the file manually and added it. It got added to the list of references, but showed up with the yellow-triangle "I don't know how to find this reference" icon. Huh.

The problem turned out to be that for some reason, the project got created with a target framework of .NET 4.0 Client Profile, which doesn't include that assembly. Once I switched to the full .NET 4.0 target, it works just fine. The Client Profile seems like a strange choice for a WCF Service Library.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

WPF/WF 4 challenge of the day

Patrick Cauldwell — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:09:28 GMT

So I’m trying to figure out how to use WF 4 as a controller for a Prism app, and already I’m running into some interesting behavior. First off, in anything but a very simple solution, custom activities don’t show up in the toolbox like they should. That’s not a huge deal, but annoying.

Of greater interest (concern?) is the fact that if I put my workflow XAML file in the main WPF app solution, everything builds and runs just fine, except the workflow does absolutely nothing. It just finished successfully, having run none of it’s activities. If I take exactly the same XAML file and put it in another assembly, then run it from the WPF app, it works just like it should. I’m guessing this is a byproduct of the new unified XAML engine, but I haven’t had time (or inclination really) to delve. Mostly it just means I have to have at least one superfluous assembly, which for now isn’t too high a price to pay.

The day I installed beta 2, I managed to crash the workflow designer about 10 times, but it seems to have settled down now. Overall, I really appreciate the new model for WF, which seems much more composable and easy to use.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

The new gig

Patrick Cauldwell — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:32:28 GMT

I realize this is a bit late, but as of just about 4 weeks ago I’m now the Architect at Eid Passport. I’m really looking forward to building some cool stuff, with a team that’s had quite a bit of experience in this space.

In short, Eid Passport makes perimeter security systems for secure facilities, and manages access to those facilities by vendors. For example, say you are the Coke delivery guy at a military base. It’s a hassle to get through the gate every time you deliver, since they have to make sure it’s OK for you to be on the base. Now the Coke guy has the option of going to our kiosk at the base and signing up for an access card that will allow him to spend much less time getting in and out. We do some background checks, employment verification (does he still really work for Coke, etc.) and then issue a credential that he can use to get through the gate. Now Coke delivery guy can make N more deliveries in a day because he’s not spending time at the gate. This is a new domain for me, so there’s a lot to learn, but it’s pretty exciting stuff. All the way from a handheld scanner that reads all kinds of cards to back end access control and data processing servers.

If any of that sounds interesting to you, we’re looking for some additional developers. There are instructions on the website (see above) for how to submit your resume if you are interested.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

New classes in the lineup

Patrick Cauldwell — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:19:27 GMT

We’ve added some new classes to the SoftSource training calendar, including a one-day Blend 2 class, and SQL 2008 for Developers. Other offerings coming up are “Agile in a Day”, WPF, WCF, ASP.NET 3.5, LINQ, Silverlight, and of course, C#. Discounts available for multiple students from the same organization, and custom on-site training also.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

Default button semantics in Silverlight revisited

Patrick Cauldwell — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:03:22 GMT

A month or so ago I posted on a solution for simulating “default button” semantics in a Silverlight app, meaning that if you are entering text in a text box and you hit the enter key, the “default button” for the “page” should be pressed. Very natural for form entry, etc.

An issue came up (discovered by John Papa) with the solution in a Prism app, because my solution depends on being able to find the “default” button in the visual tree using the FindName method. That means that you have to be high enough up the visual tree to find the button, since it only works “down” the tree. In a Prism app, it’s not necessarily clear where “high enough” might be. Plus, because the solution requires unique names, and Prism modules may have nothing to do with one another, they may have duplicate names, etc.

Here’s a revision to the solution that doesn’t require unique names, and doesn’t require any static references that might interfere with proper garbage collection…

First, a new object called DefaultButtonHub that keeps track of the relationship between text boxes and buttons. It also exposes an Attached Property that takes a DefaultButtonHub reference so we can hook up text boxes and buttons to the “hub” in XAML.

public class DefaultButtonHub
{
   ButtonAutomationPeer peer = null;

   private void Attach(DependencyObject source)
   {
       if (source is Button)
       {
           peer = new ButtonAutomationPeer(source as Button);
       }
       else if (source is TextBox)
       {
           TextBox tb = source as TextBox;
           tb.KeyUp += OnKeyUp;
       }
       else if (source is PasswordBox)
       {
           PasswordBox pb = source as PasswordBox;
           pb.KeyUp += OnKeyUp;
       }
   }

   private void OnKeyUp(object sender, KeyEventArgs arg)
   {
       if(arg.Key == Key.Enter)
           if (peer != null)
               ((IInvokeProvider)peer).Invoke();
   }

   public static DefaultButtonHub GetDefaultHub(DependencyObject obj)
   {
       return (DefaultButtonHub)obj.GetValue(DefaultHubProperty);
   }

   public static void SetDefaultHub(DependencyObject obj, DefaultButtonHub value)
   {
       obj.SetValue(DefaultHubProperty, value);
   }

   // Using a DependencyProperty as the backing store for DefaultHub.  This enables animation, styling, binding, etc...
   public static readonly DependencyProperty DefaultHubProperty =
       DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached("DefaultHub", typeof(DefaultButtonHub), typeof(DefaultButtonHub), new PropertyMetadata(OnHubAttach));

   private static void OnHubAttach(DependencyObject source, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs prop)
   {
       DefaultButtonHub hub = prop.NewValue as DefaultButtonHub;
       hub.Attach(source);
   }

}

Basically we’re expecting that both the text boxes and the button will register themselves with the “hub”. If it’s a button that’s being registered, we wrap it in a ButtonAutomationPeer so we can “press” it later. If it’s a text box, we hook up a KeyUp handler that will “press” the button if it’s there. The requirement in the XAML is only marginally heavier than in my previous solution…we have to add a resource of type DefaultButtonHub, and point the button and text boxes at it using the {StaticResource} markup extension.

<UserControl x:Class="DefaultButton.Page"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" 
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" 
    xmlns:my="clr-namespace:DefaultButton"
    Width="400" Height="300">
    <UserControl.Resources>
        <my:DefaultButtonHub x:Key="defaultHub"/>
    </UserControl.Resources>
    <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
        <Grid.RowDefinitions>
            <RowDefinition/>
            <RowDefinition/>
        </Grid.RowDefinitions>
        <TextBox x:Name="theText" Grid.Row="0"
                 my:DefaultButtonHub.DefaultHub="{StaticResource defaultHub}"/>
        <Button x:Name="theButton" Grid.Row="1" Content="Default"
                Click="theButton_Click" my:DefaultButtonHub.DefaultHub="{StaticResource defaultHub}"/>
    </Grid>
</UserControl>

Note that the new DefaultHub attached property is applied to both the text box and the button, each pointing the the single resource. This way everything gets wired up property, there isn’t any problem with name resolution (aside from the usual resource name scoping) and everything will get cleaned up if the form needs to be GC’d.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

RIA Services: the client side

Patrick Cauldwell — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:47:59 GMT

Last time, I talked about how to build a Domain Service from scratch using whatever POCO you have lying around. Now it’s time to talk about how that works on the client side…

One of the coolest things about RIA Services is that you don’t even have to “Add Service Reference…” to get a reference to the Domain Service. If your Silverlight project is linked to the ASP.NET project correctly (see the RIA Services doc for how this works) the build steps will take care of generating the right code in your Silverlight project, and away you go. There are several ways of accessing the service client-side, from dead-easy to a bit more involved. We’ll start with dead easy.

The very easiest way to get things hooked up is to use the DomainDataSource control. It wraps your DomainDataContext (the client-side generated bit) with a data source you can bind directly against in XAML.

<ria:DomainDataSource x:Name="PeopleDataSource" LoadMethodName="LoadPersons" AutoLoad="True">
  <ria:DomainDataSource.DomainContext>
      <services:PeopleDomainContext/>
  </ria:DomainDataSource.DomainContext>
</ria:DomainDataSource>
<dataControls:DataForm x:Name="dfPeople" CanUserAddItems="True" CanUserDeleteItems="true"
                     ItemsSource="{Binding ElementName=PeopleDataSource, Path=Data}" 
                     ItemEditEnded="dfPeople_ItemEditEnded">
</dataControls:DataForm>

The LoadMethodName attribute on the DomainDataSource tells it what method on the DomainContext to call in order to correctly populate the data context. You can also pass parameters defined in XAML to the Load method if you only need to load a subset. The DataForm control is bound to the Data property of the DomainDataSource, and away you go. You get this

Because the Insert/Update/Delete methods are implemented on the server-side DomainService, the DataForm automagically enables the edit, add and delete buttons at the top. If I edit or add a record, the save button shows up…

Pressing either the Save or Cancel button fires the ItemEditEnded event, which we can grab to submit the changes back to the server

private void dfPeople_ItemEditEnded(object sender, DataFormItemEditEndedEventArgs e)
{
  if (e.EditAction == DataFormEditAction.Commit)
      PeopleDataSource.SubmitChanges();
}

this is the very simplest case. Calling SubmitChanges() here will send the edits/inserts up to the server right away. For the sake of bandwidth, etc. I might want to implement my own “Save” button that batches up a whole set of change to the server rather than committing each edit individually. You would still call PeopleDataSource.SubmitChanges, but not in response to the DataForm’s events.

One of the great things about the way this works on the client side is that way the data validation attributes we set on the server-side POCO objects get propagated to the client. For example, the server side LastName property looks like this (at least in the metadata class…)

[Required]
[RegularExpression("[a-zA-z]*")]
public string LastName;

The property that gets generated on the client side is

[DataMember()]
[RegularExpression("[a-zA-z]*")]
[Required()]
public string LastName
{
  get
  {
      return this._lastName;
  }
  set
  {
      if ((this._lastName != value))
      {
          this.ValidateProperty("LastName", value);
          this.RaiseDataMemberChanging("LastName");
          this._lastName = value;
          this.RaiseDataMemberChanged("LastName");
      }
  }
}

It maintains the [Required] and [RegularExpression] attributes. Plus, in the property setter, it calls ValidateProperty, which uses reflection to examine those attributes and throw validation exceptions if necessary. By default, then, I get UI on the Silverlight client for validation.

The DataForm provides the UI around both the field in question and the summary at the bottom. In this case, I probably don’t want to tell the user what RegEx I’m validating against, so I need to add the ErrorMessage property to the validation attribute

[Required]
[RegularExpression("[a-zA-z]*", ErrorMessage="Alpha characters only please!")]
public string LastName;

When that error is corrected and I press the Save button, the Custom Validation routine is applied (see last post for details)

When all the errors are corrected, and the save happens (and gets committed back to the server) the DataForm is updated to show the correct ID value (from the server) as well as the calculated Age property.

For next to no work, I get a pretty good user experience for browsing, editing, inserting and deleting records. If I wanted a bit more control, I could load the data into the DataContext myself, and then setup the databinding, rather than using the DomainDataSource in XAML

private PeopleDomainContext _context = new PeopleDomainContext();

private void UserControl_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
  if (_context.Persons.Count == 0)
  {
      _context.Loaded += (s, arg) => loadPeople();
      _context.LoadPersons();
  }
  else
      loadPeople();
}

private void loadPeople()
{
  dfPeople.ItemsSource = _context.Persons;
}

This would give me an opportunity to only load some people based on parameters, or whatever else I wanted to do to affect the loading of data before the data binding happens.

Next time… more cool things you can do with the DomainDataContext

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

.NET RIA Services from Scratch

Patrick Cauldwell — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:53:18 GMT

Most of the demos/samples I’ve looked at so far for RIA Services have started with a LINQ to SQL or ADO.NET Entity model and generated Domain Service classes from those. I decided to start from something super simple (a POCO, if you will) and work up from there. I started with a canonical “Person” class

public partial class Person : INotifyPropertyChanged
{
   #region INotifyPropertyChanged Members

   public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;

   #endregion

   protected virtual void Changed(string propertyName)
   {
       PropertyChangedEventHandler handler = PropertyChanged;
       if (handler != null)
       {
           handler(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName));
       }
   }

   private int _personId;
   public int PersonId
   {
       get
       {
           return _personId;
       }
       set
       {
           if (_personId != value)
           {
               _personId = value;
               Changed("PersonId");
           }
       }
   }

   private string _firstName;
   public string FirstName
   {
...
   }
   private string _lastName;
   public string LastName
   {
...
   }
   private System.DateTime _birthDate;
   public System.DateTime BirthDate
   {
...
   }
}

Nothing to see here. It’s just a simple POCO that supports INotifyPropertyChanged for databinding. Note that it’s a partial class… The simplest path would be to add RIA Services attributes directly to these properties for things like data validation, but I wanted to try out all the features, so I split out the metadata into another file

[MetadataTypeAttribute(typeof(RiaServices.Web.Person.PersonMetadata))]
public partial class Person
{

   internal sealed class PersonMetadata
   {
       [Key]
       [Required]
       public int PersonId;

       [Required]
       [RegularExpression("[a-zA-z]*")]
       public string FirstName;

       [Required]
       [RegularExpression("[a-zA-z]*")]
       public string LastName;

       [Required]
       public DateTime BirthDate;
   }
}

This is kind of an interesting trick, and allows me to separate out all the RIA specific metadata from the original class definition. This makes total sense when you look at the way they handle LINQ to SQL, for example. In that case you already have Entity classes defined by the LINQ to SQL wizard, so this extra metadata class allows you to associate the right attributes without touching the (generated) LINQ to SQL classes. Clever. Notice that the metadata class uses fields, not properties, and just matches the names for the sake of simplicity.

In this case, the additional metadata defines data validation rules that get enforced both server and client side. There are other attributes to enforcing string length and ranges.

This all works because RIA Services generates “proxy” entity classes on the client side that are Silverlight compilable and also DataContracts (for serializing, which is cool…). However, what happens if I have a calculated property that’s not just storage? There’s a solution for that too, and it involves another piece of the partial class

public partial class Person
{
   [Shared]
   public int Age
   {
       get
       {
           this.Changed("Age");
           return Convert.ToInt32(Math.Floor((DateTime.Now - _birthDate).Days / 365.25));
       }
   }

}

This bit goes in a file called Person.shared.cs, and it will be copied to the client project and compiled there as well as on the server. The [Shared] attribute marks the bits that need to be thus propagated. Again, clever. Of course, any such shared code has to compile in Silverlight.

The other piece of code I want to share (using the same method) is a custom validator. In addition to the [Required] or [RegularExpression] attributes used above, you can register a custom validation routine that can examine the state of the entity as a whole. The validation routine looks like this

[Shared]
public class PersonValidator
{
   public static bool IsPersonValid(Person p, ValidationContext context, out ValidationResult result)
   {
       bool valid = true;

       result = null;

       if (p.Age > 130)
           valid = false;

       if (!valid)
       {
           result = new ValidationResult("Birthdate is invalid, people can't be that old", new []{"BirthDate"});
       }

       return valid;

   }
}

That’s in a file called PersonValidator.shared.cs, so that it will be available client and server-side. It’s associated with the Person entity with an additional attribute

[CustomValidation(typeof(PersonValidator), "IsPersonValid")]
[MetadataTypeAttribute(typeof(RiaServices.Web.Person.PersonMetadata))]
public partial class Person
...

With the Person entity all ready, I can expose it to the client by creating a new DomainService class with methods for Get, Insert, Update, Delete, etc.

[EnableClientAccess()]
public class PeopleDomainService : DomainService
{
   public IQueryable<Person> GetPersons()
   {

       return PeopleData.Persons.AsQueryable<Person>();
   }

   public IQueryable<Person> GetPerson(int personId)
   {
       return (from p in PeopleData.Persons
               where p.PersonId == personId
               select p).AsQueryable<Person>();
   }

   public void UpdatePerson(Person person)
   {
       Person oldP = (from p in PeopleData.Persons
                      where p.PersonId == person.PersonId
                      select p).FirstOrDefault();

       if (oldP != null)
       {
           PeopleData.Persons.Remove(oldP);
           PeopleData.Persons.Add(person);
       }
   }

   public void InsertPerson(Person person)
   {
       if (person.PersonId == 0)
       {
           int max = PeopleData.Persons.Max(p => p.PersonId);
           person.PersonId = max + 1;
       }

       PeopleData.Persons.Add(person);
   }

   public void DeletePerson(Person person)
   {
       Person oldP = (from p in PeopleData.Persons
                      where p.PersonId == person.PersonId
                      select p).FirstOrDefault();

       if (oldP != null)
       {
           PeopleData.Persons.Remove(oldP);
       }
   }
}

PeopleData.Persons in this case is a List<Person> that’s populated with some sample data. The [EnableClientAccess] attribute causes the build-time bits to generate a client side proxy for calling the service without the client project needing a service reference. It really makes the Silverlight and the Web projects feel like parts of the same app rather than disconnected pieces.

The corresponding class that is generated on the client side is a DomainDataContext, which feels much like a LINQ to SQL DataContext only it’s lazy-loaded like the Astoria ones. The GetPersons method on the server results in LoadPersons on the client, etc. If I hadn’t implemented the Insert/Update/Delete methods on the server side, the DomainDataContext would simple behave like a read only data source. This model works really well with the DataForm class. If I set the ItemsSource of the DataForm to the Persons “table” in the client side data context, it will properly enable/disable the add/delete buttons depending on the capabilities of the data context. Neat.

Coming in future posts… hooking up the PersonDataContext to the Silverlight 3 UI, and in ASP.NET

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

Silverlight: Taking it on the road

Patrick Cauldwell — Thu, 28 May 2009 23:38:16 GMT

Shaun and I will be doing a one-day training, “Practical Silverlight 3”, in lovely San Francisco, CA on July 8th. It’s a full day of Silverlighty goodness, starting with the basics and movin’ on up. We like to think of it as a 300 level technical introduction to the subject, so you will come away with a better understanding of the fundamentals, and where to look next.

Topics include

An introduction to Silverlight 3
All about controls (styling, templating, building your own)
Integrating with the browser
Communicating with the server via WCF, REST/POX, Sockets, you name it

If you are or will be in NorCal, come check it out. It’s a good introduction for a very reasonable price.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

Debugging session at PDX Code Camp

Patrick Cauldwell — Tue, 26 May 2009 20:51:11 GMT

SoftSource developer Prashant Sinha is going to be presenting on “Production Debugging for Silverlight and ASP.NET” at Code Camp. Prashant is a debugging wiz, and teaches our two-day .NET debugging course, so this should be a very useful session.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

Code Contracts

Patrick Cauldwell — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:50:38 GMT

In my book, I talked a bit about programming by contract and how that makes everyone’s lives easier. Say I have a method that divides one integer by another

public double Divide(int dividend, int divisor)
{
  return dividend / divisor;
}

I’d like to be able to let callers know that they can’t pass a 0 for the divisor, because that will result in a DivideByZeroException, and nobody wants that. In the past I had a couple of choices on how to express that, mostly involving writing different kids of code, because C# doesn’t have a native expression of design by contract like Eiffel does. One way is to use Debug.Assert

public double Divide(int dividend, int divisor)
{
  Debug.Assert(divisor != 0);

  return dividend / divisor;
}

That way any caller that passes a 0 will get an assertion dialog at runtime, which brings it pretty dramatically to everyone’s attention. The assumption is that using the Debug.Assert will flush out all cases where people are incorrectly calling my method during development, so it’s OK that the assertion will get compiled out of my Release build. However, that doesn’t make it impossible for a caller to pass a 0 at runtime and cause the exception. Another option is explicitly checking parameters and throwing a different exception.

public double Divide(int dividend, int divisor)
{
  if (divisor == 0)
      throw new ArgumentException("divisor cannot be zero", "divisor");

  return dividend / divisor;
}

Patrick argues that this has now moved from defining contract to defining behavior, and I can agree with that, although I’d probably argue that it defines both contract and behavior since I’ve extended the functionality of the Debug.Assert to the release build, while also protecting my internal state from bad data. But that’s really a separate discussion… :)

Now thanks to the Microsoft Code Contracts project, I have a third option. The Code Contracts project is the evolution of the work done on Spec#, but in a language neutral way. The Code Contracts tools are currently available from DevLabs for VS 2008, as well as shipping with VS 2010 B 1. Just at the moment, there are more features in the DevLabs version that what made it into the 2010 beta. With Code Contracts, I can rewrite my Divide method like this

public double Divide(int dividend, int divisor)
{
  Contract.Requires(divisor != 0);

  return dividend / divisor;
}

I like the syntax, as it calls out quite explicitly that I’m talking about contract, and making an explicit requirement. The default behavior of this method at runtime is identical to Debug.Assert, it brings up an assertion dialog and brings everything to a screeching halt. However, it’s configurable at build time, so I can have it throw exceptions instead, or do whatever might be appropriate for my environment if the contract is violated. I can even get the best of both worlds, with a generic version of Requires that specifies an exception

public double Divide(int dividend, int divisor)
{
  Contract.Requires<ArgumentException>(divisor != 0, "divisor");

  return dividend / divisor;
}

I could configure this to bring up the assertion dialog in Debug builds, but throw ArgumentNullException in Release builds. Good stuff.

The example above demonstrates a required “precondition”. With Code Contracts, I can also specify “postconditions”.

public void Transfer(Account from, Account to, decimal amount)
{
  Contract.Requires(from != null);
  Contract.Requires(to != null);
  Contract.Requires(amount > 0);
  Contract.Ensures(from.Balance >= 0);

  if (from.Balance < 0 || from.Balance < amount)
      throw new InsufficientFundsException();

  from.Balance -= amount;
  to.Balance += amount;

}

This isn’t the greatest example, but basically the Transfer method is promising (with the Contract.Ensures method) that it won’t ever leave the Balance a negative number. Again, this is arguably behavior rather than contract, but you get the point.

A really nifty feature is that I can write an interface definition and associate it with a set of contract calls, so that anyone who implements the interface will automatically “inherit” the contract validation. The syntax is a bit weird, but you can see why it would need to be like this…

[ContractClass(typeof(ContractForCalucluator))]
interface ICalculator
{
   int Add(int op1, int op2);
   double Divide(int dividend, int divisor);
}

[ContractClassFor(typeof(ICalculator))]
class ContractForCalucluator : ICalculator
{
   #region ICalculator Members

   public int Add(int op1, int op2)
   {
       return default(int);
   }

   public double Divide(int dividend, int divisor)
   {
       Contract.Requires(divisor != 0);

       return default(double);
   }

   #endregion
}

Now any class that implements ICalculator will have the contract validated for the Divide method. Cool. The last thing I want to point out is that the team included a handy sample of how to work with contract validation in your MSTest unit test code. The Contract class exposes an event called ContractFailed, and I can subscribe to the event to decide what happens on a failure. For a test assembly, I can do this

[AssemblyInitialize]
public static void AssemblyInitialize(TestContext tc)
{
  Contract.ContractFailed += (sender, e) =>
  {
      e.SetHandled();
      e.SetUnwind();
      Assert.Fail(e.FailureKind.ToString() + " : " + e.Message);
  };
}

which will translate contract failures into test failures with very explicit error messages. In the case of my Divide method if I run this test

[TestMethod()]
public void DivideContractViolation()
{
  Calculator target = new Calculator(); 
  int dividend = 12; 
  int divisor = 0; 
  double actual;
  actual = target.Divide(dividend, divisor);
  Assert.Fail("Should have failed");
}

I get a test failure of

Test method CalculatorTests.CalculatorTest.DivideContractViolation threw exception: System.Diagnostics.Contracts.ContractException: Precondition failed: divisor != 0 divisor ---> Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting.AssertFailedException: Assert.Fail failed. Precondition : Precondition failed: divisor != 0 divisor.

Cool. This is definitely something I’ll be looking at more in the future.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

PDX Code Camp is coming up…

Patrick Cauldwell — Wed, 20 May 2009 20:45:43 GMT

Not this weekend but next (5/30) is PDX Code Camp 2009. A whole day of free software learning and general nerdy hanging out. I’ll be talking about building business apps in Silverlight 3, and my SoftSource compadre Tim Johnson is going to be talking about making your web application more accessible for people with disabilities. There are also a host of other sessions including some big names like Ward Cunningham, so it’s an event not to be missed, and cheap at twice the price!

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

LINQ: joining data in memory with data in SQL Server

Patrick Cauldwell — Wed, 20 May 2009 20:38:43 GMT

This came up in class yesterday, so I did a little digging. Everyone may already know this, but it came as news to me. :)

If I’ve got a collection in memory, as well as a LINQ to SQL DataContext

List<FavoriteFood> foods = new List<FavoriteFood>(){
	new FavoriteFood{CustomerID = "ALFKI", Favorite="Chips"},
	new FavoriteFood{CustomerID = "ANATR", Favorite = "Fish"}};

NorthwindDataContext context = new NorthwindDataContext();

and I want to do an INNER JOIN between the foods list and the Customer table in Northwind, it would seem like this should do it

var bad = (from cust in context.Customers
         join f in foods on cust.CustomerID equals f.CustomerID
         select new
         {
             cust.ContactName,
             f.Favorite
         }).ToList();

but sadly, no.

if you stop to think about it, it totally makes sense that it wouldn’t work like that, since there’s no way to translate that into SQL in any rational way to send to SQL server.

OK, so the next step would be to first get the customers in memory, then do the join

//this executes the whole query, thus retrieving the entire customer table
var customers = (from c in context.Customers
             select c).ToList();

//an inner join between the customers from SQL and the in-memory list
var inner = from cust in customers
     join f in foods on cust.CustomerID equals f.CustomerID
     select new
     {
         cust.ContactName,
         f.Favorite
     };

That works, but I’ve had to pull the entire Customer table into memory just to join two rows. If I wanted to do a LEFT OUTER JOIN, I’d need that anyway, like so

//here's the left outer join between the customer list from SQL 
//and the in-memory favorites
var leftouter = from cust in customers
             join f in foods on cust.CustomerID equals f.CustomerID into custFoods
             from custFood in custFoods.DefaultIfEmpty()
             select new
             {
                 cust.ContactName,
                 Favorite = custFood == null ? null : custFood.Favorite
             };

but I want an inner join without pulling down all the customers, so I need to only fetch those rows that will join from Customer

//this is how you manage the IN clause
var x = from c1 in context.Customers
     where (from cf in foods
           select cf.CustomerID).Contains(c1.CustomerID)
     select c1;

//Note that to join the result in x back to the foods collection you would have to 
//execute the query just like with customers above...
var littleInnerJoin = from filteredCustomer in x.ToList()
                   join f in foods on filteredCustomer.CustomerID equals f.CustomerID
                   select new
                       {
                           filteredCustomer.ContactName,
                           f.Favorite
                       };

It’s two steps, but now I’ve just loaded the rows that will join into memory, and then done the join with LINQ to Objects. It bears a little thinking about, but doesn’t seem like too much overhead, IMHO.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

A “default button” in Silverlight

Patrick Cauldwell — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:27:54 GMT

Let’s say I’ve got to the effort of creating a modal dialog or it’s equivalent in a Silverlight application. What I would like to complete the picture is a “default” button, so that if I hit the Enter key while in a text box, the dialog will be “submitted”. There are probably several ways of achieving this end, but I wanted something that was simple, and encapsulated in an attached property so the consumer wouldn’t have to deal with much code. I wrote the attached property so that I could use it on text boxes like this

<TextBox x:Name="theText" VerticalAlignment="Center" Margin="10,0,10,0" 
	Grid.Row="0" my:DefaultButtonService.DefaultButton="theButton"/>

where “theButton” here is the default button I want to be pressed when the Enter key happens inside my text box. The downside is that I have to apply this property to every text box on the page, but so be it, that seems like a relatively small price to pay. So I got as far as finding the named button in the visual tree, but the the question was, how to “press” the button. The Button class in Silverlight has a protected OnClick that would do the trick, if it wasn’t protected. I could derive my own control from Button and expose the OnClick method, but ewww. If I did that then every dialog that wanted this behavior would have to remember to use the derived Button class. I tried reflecting over the Button and Invoking OnClick anyway, but turns out you get a security exception. OK. Then, thanks to a presentation Stuart gave us yesterday on Accessibility, I remembered the Automation framework in Silverlight. That turned out to be super easy, just create an instance of ButtonAutmationPeer from the Button, then Invoke it. Cool.

public static class DefaultButtonService
{
   public static readonly DependencyProperty DefaultButtonProperty =
       DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached("DefaultButton", typeof(string), typeof(DefaultButtonService), new PropertyMetadata(OnDefaultButtonChanged));


   public static string GetDefaultButton(DependencyObject d)
   {
       return (string)d.GetValue(DefaultButtonProperty);
   }

   /// <summary>
   /// Sets the CommandParameter property.
   /// </summary>
   public static void SetDefaultButton(DependencyObject d, string value)
   {
       d.SetValue(DefaultButtonProperty, value);
   }

   private static void OnDefaultButtonChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
   {
       TextBox tb = d as TextBox;
       if (tb != null)
       {
           tb.KeyUp += new KeyEventHandler(tb_KeyUp);
       }
   }

   static void tb_KeyUp(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
   {
       switch (e.Key)
       {
           case Key.Enter:
               string name = (string)((DependencyObject)sender).GetValue(DefaultButtonProperty);
               object root = App.Current.RootVisual;
               object button = ((FrameworkElement)root).FindName(name);
               if (button is Button)
               {
                   ButtonAutomationPeer peer = new ButtonAutomationPeer((Button)button);

                   IInvokeProvider ip = (IInvokeProvider)peer;
                   ip.Invoke();
               }
               break;
       }
   }
}

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

New one-day classes at SoftSource

Patrick Cauldwell — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:41:19 GMT

We just added a set of new one day classes starting in May, including “Agile in day”, Silverlight 3, and UI design patterns for WPF and Silverlight. These are lecture-style classes that will give you an in depth look at each subject. Like our previous Silverlight event, these are 300-400 level, technical sessions that will give you a leg up on each subject in a day. Because they are presented lecture style, we can offer them for only $125 each, so feel free to collect the whole set. :-) Details and registration here. We may be adding some additional topics soon, so check back often.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

MIX 09 - Thursday

Patrick Cauldwell — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:45:58 GMT

I'll probably have some more cogent things to say about it all in a few days, but my first set of takeaways as of mid-day Thursday:

Silverlight 3 solves many if not most of the downsides of working in Silverlight vs. WPF
Silverlight 3 + .NET RIA services totally removes any and all barriers to building business apps in Silverlight
.NET RIA services is the killer app we’ve been waiting for as far as building RIA apps is concerned. it’s like Astoria, only better, and doesn’t require Entities (long live LINQ to SQL!).
Blend 3 will revolutionize the way designers and developers work together, and make the design process much faster
Free martinis are both a blessing and a curse
Having a DJ at your keynotes is a fantastic idea
Not only would downtown Hillsboro (where I live) fit inside the Venetian, but you probably wouldn’t actually notice it.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

Congratulations, you've installed dasBlog with Web Deploy!

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 07:00:00 GMT

After logging in, be sure to visit all the options under Configuration in the Admin Menu Bar above. There are 26 themes to choose from, and you can also create your own.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

MVVM and a modal dialog

Patrick Cauldwell — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 23:36:01 GMT

I’m building a MVVM app in WPF, and needed to show a modal dialog, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it work and still maintain the separation between ViewModels and Views. I have been mapping Views to ViewModels using DataTemplates, so that the relationship is declarative in XAML rather than in code someplace. What I ended up with was a new Window called Dialog that takes a type in its constructor that corresponds to a ViewModelBase-derived type. (See Josh Smith’s WPF Apps With The Model-View-ViewModel Design Pattern article for background on how the pieces fit together…)

public partial class Dialog : Window
{
    public Dialog(Type vmType)
    {
        InitializeComponent();

        ViewModelBase vmb = Activator.CreateInstance(vmType) as ViewModelBase;
        
        item.Content = vmb;

        this.Title = vmb.DisplayName;
    }
}

In the XAML for Dialog, there’s just a Grid that contains a ContentPresenter called “item”. The constructor sets item’s content to be the ViewModel, and the DataTemplate takes care of associating the View (a UserControl) with the ViewModel. Note the use of SizeToContent="WidthAndHeight" on the Dialog window, which causes the window to resize to how ever big the UserControl that represents the View might be.

<Window x:Class="SomeNamespace.Dialog"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    Title="Dialog" SizeToContent="WidthAndHeight">
    <Grid>
        <ContentPresenter x:Name="item">
            
        </ContentPresenter>
    </Grid>
</Window>

<DataTemplate DataType="{x:Type vm:NewThingViewModel}">
    <vw:NewThing/>
</DataTemplate>

To create an instance of the new modal dialog, I just create a new instance of Dialog and pass the type of ViewModel it’s supposed to host…

new Dialog(typeof(NewThingViewModel)).ShowDialog();

There are still some details to work out as far as getting results from said dialog, but hey, progress…

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

MVVM: binding to Commands in Silverlight

Patrick Cauldwell — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:06:59 GMT

So yesterday I was reading Josh Smith’s WPF Apps With The Model-View-ViewModel Design Pattern article in last month’s MSDN magazine, and I really liked the sample app that he built. It totally cleared up for me some rough edges (in my understanding) of MVVM. Most specifically, I had been conflicted about where to put things like button click handlers. Do you put a Click event handler in your codebehind, which just defers to the View Model? Do you create a generic CommandBinding handler to wire up commands to your View Model’s methods? (I’ve seen both in various examples…) The former seems like cheating a bit on MVVM (no code behind would be ideal, it seems to me) and the latter overly complicated. Josh’s solution is to bind the Command property of the UIElement (button, menu item, whatever) to a property of type ICommand on the View Model.

That totally made sense to me. No more code behind (like at all, basically) and I don’t have to build additional framework to make it happen, with the exception of coming up with an ICommand implementation. Josh solved that with a class he calls RelayCommand, which just wraps an ICommand implementation around a delegate (or lambda) of type Action<object>, with an optional Predicate<object> to handle the CanExecute method of ICommand.

Groovy, now my XAML knows absolutely nothing about the View Model, and it’s only links to said View Model are through data binding.

Then I got to wondering if something as easy could work in Silverlight… The answer turned out to be almost, but not quite. Since Silverlight controls don’t expose a Command property, you have to hook them up yourself, but otherwise it works just the same way.

So if I’ve got a page with a single button on it

<UserControl x:Class="SilverlightCommands.Page"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" 
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" 
    xmlns:my="clr-namespace:SilverlightCommands"
    Width="400" Height="300">
    <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
        <Button Content="Say Hello..." VerticalAlignment="Center" 
                HorizontalAlignment="Center" 
                my:ButtonService.Command="{Binding Path=SayHello}"/>
    </Grid>
</UserControl>

I can add an attached property whose value is bound to the ICommand property on the View Model. The attached property grabs the ICommand and hooks up the button’s click handler to the ICommand’s Execute method.

#region Command

/// <summary>
/// Command Attached Dependency Property
/// </summary>
public static readonly DependencyProperty CommandProperty =
    DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached("Command", typeof(ICommand), typeof(ButtonService),
        new PropertyMetadata(OnCommandChanged));

/// <summary>
/// Gets the Command property.
/// </summary>
public static ICommand GetCommand(DependencyObject d)
{
    return (ICommand)d.GetValue(CommandProperty);
}

/// <summary>
/// Sets the Command property.
/// </summary>
public static void SetCommand(DependencyObject d, ICommand value)
{
    d.SetValue(CommandProperty, value);
}

/// <summary>
/// Handles changes to the Command property.
/// </summary>
private static void OnCommandChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
{
    if (d is Button)
    {
        Button b = d as Button;
        ICommand c = e.NewValue as ICommand;
        b.Click += delegate(object sender, RoutedEventArgs arg) { c.Execute(null); };
    }
}

#endregion

In the View Model, then, is the actual handler for the command

public class PageViewModel
{
    public ICommand SayHello
    {
        get
        {
            return new RelayCommand(param => MessageBox.Show("HelloWorld"));
        }
    }
}

Note that I’m using Josh’s RelayCommand helper to wrap the simple lambda.

That feels like not too terribly much infrastructure, although I might have to create separate attached properties to handle different control types (e.g. those that don’t have a Click event). It would be pretty straightforward to support command parameters in the same way, by creating a CommandParameter attached property and picking up its value in the OnCommandChanged handler…

private static void OnCommandChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
{
    if (d is Button)
    {
        string parameter = d.GetValue(CommandParameterProperty) as string;
        Button b = d as Button;
        ICommand c = e.NewValue as ICommand;
        b.Click += delegate(object sender, RoutedEventArgs arg) { c.Execute(parameter); };
    }
}

The only thing that doesn’t really handle well is the CanExecute method, which in WPF would automatically enable/disable the button based on the result of the ICommand’s CanExecute method. I tried a couple ways of wiring it up during the OnCommandChanged handler, but couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t look to have nasty side-effect (garbage collection, etc.) or be just ugly. I’d probably just bind the IsEnable property of the button to a separate boolean on the View Model and deal with it there.

Update:

Code is here.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

Replacing JavaScript with Silverlight

Patrick Cauldwell — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 23:08:15 GMT

Shaun posted a nice concise example of replacing JavaScript code with similar compiled code in Silverlight. If you have any complex business logic currently written in JavaScript, this would be a great way of turning that into compiled, type-safe C#.

The posts on this weblog are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.