I understand that grails 2 now supports singleton scoped controllers. I have a requirement to use such a controller and I have a question about the request object (and other implicit objects)
The grails documentation always refers to the request object as an instance variable but in a singleton scoped controller it would not be safe to use such an object. What is the recommended way to handle the implicit objects in a singleton scoped controller? I tried modifying the controller's action signature to accept the request object as a parameter (similar to standard spring MVC) and this appears to work:
class MyController {
static scope = "singleton"
def list(request) {
// do something
}
}
However I've also noticed that this.request still exists, so how can I be sure that the parameter request is not just a reference to this.request?
In either case it would not matter. The request object is bound using a ThreadLocal variable, so it would in all cases be safe to access concurrently.
Related
I have an ASP.NET 5 app using RavenDB, and I'm trying to create an attribute that will create a "Changeset" document with the keys of all the documents that were stored by the action.
For that purpose, I created an ActionFilterAttribute instantiated via ServiceFilterAttribute, which is registered as Scoped, that sets a flag on another Scoped component, let's call it ChangesetAccessor, which holds the list of changes.
The IDocumentStore is obviously a Singleton, and the listener (IDocumentStoreListener implementation) is manually instantiated. It needs access to the current ChangesetAccessor, so I thought giving it a reference to the IServiceProvider so it can call GetService<ChangesetAccessor> as needed would be enough, but it is receiving a different instance.
How can I get the ChangesetAccessor for the "current request" from my listener?
You can actually access RequestServices off of the HttpContext to get scoped instances. It's kind of backwards, and really will depend on Microsoft.AspNet to do it, but it will work for your situation; interestingly, IHttpContextAccessor is a singleton, too, though it gives you a scoped value.
// injected:
IHttpContextAccessor httpContextAccessor;
// in your method:
httpContextAccessor.HttpContext.RequestServices.GetService<ChangesetAccessor>()
Looking at some of the MVC examples online, I've see that typically in a controller the DbContext variable is declared as a private member variable (i.e. global) and accessible to all the methods.
But, I recently came across an article on ASP.NET Identity, and noticed in the controller, the DbContext is declared within each method (that requires it).
Is there a security benefit to this approach? Perhaps limit the lifespan of the security object(s) for better overall security?!?!
If not, then I see the first approach being more efficient, where the database context is instantiated upon the controller loading.
Below is all I could find about DbContext, but nothing to really answer my question.
DbContext declaration - Framework 4.1 - MVC 3.0
MVC, DbContext and Multithreading
On every request, a new instance of the controller is constructed. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, it does not really matter whether the dbcontext is instantiated in the constructor vs encapsulated in any given method.
Aside from a style choice, reasons to declare and contain a dbcontext in a given method is that:
Methods that do not need it will not instantiate the context, eliminating the overhead (if there is any). This can also be accomplished using a lazy initialization pattern.
The context is disposed of immediately as soon as a method is done with it, rather than at the end of the request. Generally this should not be a concern though; usually if users are waiting around for longer than a few seconds you have a bigger problem.
Different methods use different contexts.
Among others, some reasons to declare a single context and instantiate it once:
You have only one place that instantiates a context rather than many. In a typical application, most pages will need some information from the database anyway.
Methods that call other methods will not each hold on to their own instance of a context object.
You can create a base controller class that by default creates a dbcontext object, allowing you to be DRY in all inherited controllers.
Answer from #Ic. is pretty good. I wanted to add that if you need to pass information from your Request into your DbContext constructor then you need to create the instance of your DbContext inside your action methods. The reason is the Request object will be null till the control enters your action method.
More information: I had a need to build connection string dynamically depending on the location of the user. I saved the location as a cookie that I accessed through Request object. I had a valid Request inside the action method but it was null inside the constructor or at the class level properties of the controller.
If I make a Grails controller a singleton via:
static scope = "singleton"
... how does Grails expose a params variable to my controller's actions, where the params are request specific?
I would understand if params were passed into my action methods as a variable, but here params are just available and in-scope (and different for simultaneous requests, despite the fact that there's only one instance of my controller).
How is this implemented under the hood?
Each request gets its own thread, so the request, response, params, session, etc. are available independent of whether the controller is a singleton or created new for every request. It would be different if these variables were fields in the class, but they're not.
Under the hood this is implemented by an AST transform that mixes in org.codehaus.groovy.grails.plugins.web.api.ControllersApi into the controller classes, which adds methods such as getParams() (which you can use as the params property). These call RequestContextHolder.currentRequestAttributes() to get the thread-local information.
I have quite a few things in the constructor of my controller. Is it the case that every time I request a new page with MVC3 then the constructor executes?
A controller instance is required to serve each request. And to obtain this instance (obviously) the controller constructor is called on each request. This being said you should avoid doing many things in this constructor. There are cases for example where for some particular action on this controller you don't need all this initialization and despite this if you put it in the constructor, it will be executed. If the tasks you perform are simply instantiating some other dependencies that your controller needs, then you shouldn't worry about performance, you should worry about properly architecting your application as this job should be handled by a DI framework.
Another common gotcha is that inside the constructor you don't yet have access to the HttpContext and some properties such as Request, Response, ... might not be available in the controller constructor. They become available in the Initialize method.
All this to say that I recommend you avoid putting code (other than storing ctor argument dependencies into private variables for injecting things like services, repositories, ...) in your constructor.
The Controller base class includes the ControllerContext which is a per-request context for a controller which includes references to HttpContext for example.
Let that sink in a moment.
It's very easy to write a custom ControllerBuilder or use the new DependencyResolver to serve up a singleton controller using your favorite DI container. But what that means is your controller may hold onto state from a previous request.
In fact, one of the most common bugs when people use Castle Windsor (which uses Singleton by default I've been told) to create their controllers is they get weird behavior.
As others have pointed out, if your controller is doing a lot of work in the constructor, refactor that work into a dependency on your controller which gets passed in via your controller's contstructor. Let's call that dependency a "service".
That service can itself be a singleton (as long as it doesn't hold onto per-request state) and you can use the DependencyResolver combined with your DI container to instantiate your controllers.
It's up to the ControllerFactory to determine this; the controller factory serves up the controller instance. You could build in the ability to cache the controller, but: it would be better not to pass those references via the ctor of the controller. It would be better to cache each reference separately, and pass to the controller during construction, and let the controller get recreated everytime. If you cache the controller, it will cache other references potentially like HttpContext, which would be not the current request.
HTH.
Yes, M Jacob and this helps us making Data Access request for new DataContext in each request and it is very efficient. it is recommended to initialize a new DataContext (in your controller constructor) in each request rather than making persistent DataContext.
Internet is stateless and the server cannot really distinguish you from any other person out there (technically speaking, ignoring sessions and cookies). You are served the content and connection with you is ended. On your new request the things start from scratch. I agree with you that inability to keep an object alive is an overhead, but even bigger overhead would be if million users made a request with a different requests to the same object. Keeping million copies of the same object is next to impossible.
Regards,
Huske
I have a base Controller ApplicationController that needs to grab the URL Host and do some processing before the child controllers are fired. Since controller constructors are fired before RequestContext is initialized I have to override Initialize method to do my processing.
ApplicationController:
Protected Overrides Sub Initialize(ByVal requestContext As System.Web.Routing.RequestContext)
MyBase.Initialize(requestContext)
Dim host as String
host = Request.Url.Host.ToString
End Sub
What is the logic behind having Controller Constructors fire before the Initialize method?
Also what are the rules to what should be placed in the Initialize Method.
Assuming that constructors are the first instance method ever to be fired in a .NET class, that shouldn't come as a surprise and is not really something MVC specific. It's more how the .NET framework works.
The MVC framework needs to first instantiate a controller and then initialize it => it calls the constructor first. And because performing lots of code that could potentially might throw exceptions, etc... is not always best to be put in a constructor => the presence of the Initialize method. As far as this method is concerned I must admit that I have written lots of ASP.NET MVC code and never had to use it. Action filters always seemed like a better alternative.
So to answer your question:
Also what are the rules to what should be placed in the Initialize Method.
I've never ever put any code and never ever need to override this method. I've always preferred using action filters because this way I am no longer in the obligation of deriving from a common base controller (not that this is a problem).
Sometimes, maybe you would want your request to initialize your variables, so in this case you should use the Initialize method.
For example, if you want to initialize some variables in a different way when the request is local or not, etc.