There's something I just don't get about guice: According to what I've read so far, I'm supposed to use the Injector only in my bootstrapping class (in a standalone application this would typically be in the main() method), like in the example below (taken from the guice documentation):
public static void main(String[] args) {
/*
* Guice.createInjector() takes your Modules, and returns a new Injector
* instance. Most applications will call this method exactly once, in their
* main() method.
*/
Injector injector = Guice.createInjector(new BillingModule());
/*
* Now that we've got the injector, we can build objects.
*/
RealBillingService billingService = injector.getInstance(RealBillingService.class);
...
}
But what if not all Objects I ever need can be created during startup? Maybe I want to respond to some user interaction when the application is running? Don't I have to keep my injector around somewhere (e.g. as a static variable) and then call injector.getInstance(SomeInterface.class) when I need to create a new object?
Of course spreading calls to Injector.getInstance() all over the place seems not to be desirable.
What am I getting wrong here?
Yes, you basically only should use the Injector to create get the instance for the root-object. The rest of the application shouldn't touch the Guice-Container. As you've noticed, you still need to create some objects when required. There are different approaches for doing that, each suitable for different needs.
Inject a Provider
Provider is a interface from Guice. It allows you to request a new instance of a object. That object will be created using Guice. For example.
class MyService{
private Provider<Transaction> transactionProvider;
public MainGui(Provider<Transaction> transactionProvider){
this.transactionProvider = transactionProvider;
}
public void actionStarted(){
Transaction transaction = transactionProvider.get();
}
Build a Factory
Often you need some kind of factory. This factory uses some injected services and some parameters and creates a new object for you. Then you use this factory for new instances. Then you inject that factory and use it. There also help for this with the AssistedInject-extension
I think with these two possibilities you rarely need to use the Guice-Injector itself. However sometimes is still appropriate to use the injector itself. Then you can inject the Injector to a component.
To extend on the answer Gamlor posted, you need to also differentiate between the object types you are using.
For services, injection is the correct solution, however, don't try to always make data objects (which are generally the leafs in your object graph) injectable. There may be situations where that is the correct solution, but injecting a Provider<List> is probably not a good idea. A colleague of mine ended up do that, it made the code base very confusing after a while. We just finished cleaning it all out and the Guice modules are much more specific now.
In the abstract, I think the general idea is that if responding to user events is part of the capabilities of your application, then, well...
BillingService billingService = injector.getInstance(BillingService.class);
billingService.respondToUserEvent( event );
I guess that might be a little abstract, but the basic idea is that you get from Guice your top-level application class. Judging from your question, I guess that maybe BillingService isn't your top-level class?
Related
I am new to dependency injection pattern. I love the idea, but struggle to apply it to my case. I have a singleton object, let’s call it X, which I need often in many parts of my program, in many different classes, sometimes deep in the call stack. Usually I would implement this as a globally available singleton. How is this implemented within the DI pattern, specifically with .NET Core DI container? I understand I need to register X with the DI container as a singleton, but how then I get access to it? DI will instantiate classes with constructors which will take reference to X, that’s great – but I need X deep within the call hierarchy, within my own objects which .NET Core or DI container know nothing about, in objects that were created using new rather than instantiated by the DI container.
I guess my question is – how does global singleton pattern aligns/implemented by/replaced by/avoided with the DI pattern?
Well, "new is glue" (Link). That means if you have new'ed an instance, it is glued to your implementation. You cannot easily exchange it with a different implementation, for example a mock for testing. Like gluing together Lego bricks.
I you want to use proper dependency injection (using a container/framework or not) you need to structure your program in a way that you don't glue your components together, but instead inject them.
Every class is basically at hierarchy level 1 then. You need an instance of your logger? You inject it. You need an instance of a class that needs a logger? You inject it. You want to test your logging mechanism? Easy, you just inject something that conforms to your logger interface that logs into a list and the at the end of your test you can check your list and see if all the required logs are there. That is something you can automate (in contrast to using your normal logging mechanism and checking the logfiles by hand).
That means in the end, you don't really have a hierarchy, because every class you have just gets their dependencies injected and it will be the container/framework or your controlling code that determines what that means for the order of instantiation of objects.
As far as design patterns go, allow me an observation: even now, you don't need a singleton. Right now in your program, it would work if you had a plain global variable. But I guess you read that global variables are "bad". And design patterns are "good". And since you need a global variable and singleton delivers a global variable, why use the "bad", when you can use the "good" right? Well, the problem is, even with a singleton, the global variable is bad. It's a drawback of the pattern, a toad you have to swallow for the singleton logic to work. In your case, you don't need the singleton logic, but you like the taste of toads. So you created a singleton. Don't do that with design patterns. Read them very carefully and make sure you use them for the intended purpose, not because you like their side-effects or because it feels good to use a design pattern.
Just an idea and maybe I need your thought:
public static class DependencyResolver
{
public static Func<IServiceProvider> GetServiceProvider;
}
Then in Startup:
public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IServiceProvider serviceProvider)
{
DependencyResolver.GetServiceProvider = () => { return serviceProvider; };
}
And now in any deed class:
DependencyResolver.GetServiceProvider().GetService<IService>();
Here's a simplified example of how this would work without a singleton.
This example assumes that your project is built in the following way:
the entry point is main
main creates an instance of class GuiCreator, then calls the method createAndRunGUI()
everything else is handled by that method
So your simplified code looks like this:
// main
// ... (boilerplate)
container = new Container();
gui = new GuiCreator(container.getDatabase(), container.getLogger(), container.getOtherDependency());
gui.createAndRunGUI();
// ... (boilerplate)
// GuiCreator
public class GuiCreator {
private IDatabase db;
private ILogger log;
private IOtherDependency other;
public GuiCreator(IDatabase newdb, ILogger newlog, IOtherDependency newother) {
db = newdb;
log = newlog;
other = newother;
}
public void createAndRunGUI() {
// do stuff
}
}
The Container class is where you actually define which implementations will be used, while the GuiCreator contructor takes interfaces as arguments. Now let's say the implementation of ILogger you choose has itself a dependency, defined by an interface its contructor takes as argument. The Container knows this and resolves it accordingly by instantiating the Logger as new LoggerImplementation(getLoggerDependency());. This goes on for the entire dependency chain.
So in essence:
All classes keep instances of interfaces they depend upon as members.
These members are set in the respective constructor.
The entire dependency chain is thus resolved when the first object is instantiated. Note that there might/should be some lazy loading involved here.
The only places where the container's methods are accessed to create instances are in main and inside the container itself:
Any class used in main receives its dependencies from main's container instance.
Any class not used in main, but rather used only as a dependency, is instantiated by the container and receives its dependencies from within there.
Any class used neither in main nor indirectly as a dependency somewhere below the classes used in main will obviously never be instantiated.
Thus, no class actually needs a reference to the container. In fact, no class needs to know there even is a container in your project. All they know is which interfaces they personally need.
The Container can either be provided by some third party library/framework or you can code it yourself. Typically, it will use some configuration file to determine which implementations are actually supposed to be used for the various interfaces. Third party containers will usually perform some sort of code analysis supported by annotations to "autowire" implementations, so if you go with a ready-made tool, make sure you read up on how that part works because it will generally make your life easier down the road.
I am working on an existing Eclipse RCP based on Luna which consists of 99% 3.x API. We want to change this in an ongoing process; so when I was given the task of creating a new view, I wanted to use the new (in Luna, anyways) e4view element for the org.eclipse.ui.views extension point.
My problem is that part of the RCP uses xtext and thus, several components are available by using Guice.
I am now stranded with something like this
public class MyViewPart
{
#Inject // <- should be injected via Guice (I used #com.google.inject.Inject, otherwise E4DI would complain)
ISomeCustomComponent component;
#PostConstruct // <- should be called and injected via E4 DI
public void createView(Composite parent)
{
// ...
}
}
To get this injected with Guice, I would usually use an AbstractGuiceAwareExecutableExtensionFactory (as usually done in Xtext contexts) like this:
<plugin>
<extension
point="org.eclipse.ui.views">
<e4view
class="my.app.MyExecutableExtensionFactory:my.app.MyViewPart"
id="my.app.view"
name="my view"
restorable="true">
</e4view>
</extension>
</plugin>
But I did not expect this to work, because I thought it would bypass the E4 mechanism (actually, it seems to be the other way round and the e4view.class element seems to ignore the extension factory and just uses my.app.MyViewPart to inject it with E4DI. To be sure, I have set a class loading breakpoint to MyViewPart which is hit from ContextInjectionFactory.make()).
As I said, I didn't expect both DI frameworks to coexist without conflict, so I think the solution to my problem would be to put those object which I need injected into the E4 context.
I have googled a bit but I have found multiple approaches, and I don't know which one is the "correct" or "nice" one.
Among the approaches I have found, there are:
providing context functions which delegate to the guice injector
retrieving the objects from guice and configure them as injector bindings
retrieving the objects from guice, obtain a context and put them in the context
(The first two approaches are mentioned in the "Configure Bindings" section of https://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse4/RCP/Dependency_Injection)
And of course I could get the objects from Guice in the MyViewPart implementation, but that's not what I want...
[Edit:] In the meantime I have explored the options above a bit more:
Context Functions
I tried to register the context functions as services in the Bundle Activator with this utility method:
private void registerGuiceDelegatingInjection(final BundleContext context, final Class<?> clazz)
{
IContextFunction func = new ContextFunction()
{
#Override
public Object compute(final IEclipseContext context, final String contextKey)
{
return guiceInjector.getInstance(clazz);
}
};
ServiceRegistration<IContextFunction> registration =
context.registerService(IContextFunction.class, func,
new Hashtable<>(Collections.singletonMap(
IContextFunction.SERVICE_CONTEXT_KEY, clazz.getName()
)));
}
and called registerGuiceDelegatingInjection() in the BundleActivator's start() method for each class I needed to be retrieved via Guice.
For some reason, however, this did not work. The service itself was registered as expected (I checked via the OSGi console) but the context function was never called. Instead I got injection errors that the objects could not be found during injection. Maybe the context functions cannot be contributed dynamically but have to be contributed via declarative services, so they are known as soon as the platform starts?
(Answer here is: yes. As the JavaDoc to IContextFunction says: Context functions can optionally be registered as OSGi services [...] to seed context instances with initial values. - and since the application context already exists when my bundle is started, the dynamically registered service is not seen by the ContextFactory in time).
Injector Bindings
I quickly found out that this solution does not work for me, because you can only specify an interface-class to implementation-class mapping in the form
InjectorFactory.getDefault().addBinding(IMyComponent.class).implementedBy(MyComponent.class)
You obviously cannot configure instances or factories this way, so this is not an option, because I need to delegate to Guice and get Guice-injected instances of the target classes...
Putting the objects in the context
This currently works for me, but is not very nice. See answer below.
[Edit 2:] As I have reported, putting the objects in the (application) context works for me. The downside is that having the objects in the application context is too global. If I had two or more bundles which would require injection of object instances for another DSL, I would have to take care (e.g., by using #Named annotations) to not get the wrong instance injected.
What I would like better is a way to extend the Part's context with which my e4view is created and injected directly. But so far I have not found a way to explicitly target that context when putting in my instances ...
Thanks for any further hints...
Try the processor mechanism of E4: You should be using a (Pre or Post) Processor (along with the PostContextCreate annotation) to register your POJOs into the (global) IEclipseContext.
The solution that worked for me best so far was getting the IEclipseContext and put the required classes there myself during the bundle activator's start() method.
private void registerGuiceDelegatingInjection(final BundleContext context, final Class<?> clazz)
{
IServiceLocator s = PlatformUI.getWorkbench();
IEclipseContext ctx = (IEclipseContext) s.getService(IEclipseContext.class);
ctx.set(clazz.getName(), guiceInjector.getInstance(clazz));
}
This works at least for now. I am not sure how it works out in the future if more bundles would directly put instances in the context; maybe in the long-term named instances would be needed. Also, for me this works, because the injected objects are singletons, so it does not do any harm to put single instances in the context.
I would have liked the context function approach better, but I could not get it to work so far.
I'm trying to understand dependency injections (DI), and once again I failed. It just seems silly. My code is never a mess; I hardly write virtual functions and interfaces (although I do once in a blue moon) and all my configuration is magically serialized into a class using json.net (sometimes using an XML serializer).
I don't quite understand what problem it solves. It looks like a way to say: "hi. When you run into this function, return an object that is of this type and uses these parameters/data."
But... why would I ever use that? Note I have never needed to use object as well, but I understand what that is for.
What are some real situations in either building a website or desktop application where one would use DI? I can come up with cases easily for why someone may want to use interfaces/virtual functions in a game, but it's extremely rare (rare enough that I can't remember a single instance) to use that in non-game code.
First, I want to explain an assumption that I make for this answer. It is not always true, but quite often:
Interfaces are adjectives; classes are nouns.
(Actually, there are interfaces that are nouns as well, but I want to generalize here.)
So, e.g. an interface may be something such as IDisposable, IEnumerable or IPrintable. A class is an actual implementation of one or more of these interfaces: List or Map may both be implementations of IEnumerable.
To get the point: Often your classes depend on each other. E.g. you could have a Database class which accesses your database (hah, surprise! ;-)), but you also want this class to do logging about accessing the database. Suppose you have another class Logger, then Database has a dependency to Logger.
So far, so good.
You can model this dependency inside your Database class with the following line:
var logger = new Logger();
and everything is fine. It is fine up to the day when you realize that you need a bunch of loggers: Sometimes you want to log to the console, sometimes to the file system, sometimes using TCP/IP and a remote logging server, and so on ...
And of course you do NOT want to change all your code (meanwhile you have gazillions of it) and replace all lines
var logger = new Logger();
by:
var logger = new TcpLogger();
First, this is no fun. Second, this is error-prone. Third, this is stupid, repetitive work for a trained monkey. So what do you do?
Obviously it's a quite good idea to introduce an interface ICanLog (or similar) that is implemented by all the various loggers. So step 1 in your code is that you do:
ICanLog logger = new Logger();
Now the type inference doesn't change type any more, you always have one single interface to develop against. The next step is that you do not want to have new Logger() over and over again. So you put the reliability to create new instances to a single, central factory class, and you get code such as:
ICanLog logger = LoggerFactory.Create();
The factory itself decides what kind of logger to create. Your code doesn't care any longer, and if you want to change the type of logger being used, you change it once: Inside the factory.
Now, of course, you can generalize this factory, and make it work for any type:
ICanLog logger = TypeFactory.Create<ICanLog>();
Somewhere this TypeFactory needs configuration data which actual class to instantiate when a specific interface type is requested, so you need a mapping. Of course you can do this mapping inside your code, but then a type change means recompiling. But you could also put this mapping inside an XML file, e.g.. This allows you to change the actually used class even after compile time (!), that means dynamically, without recompiling!
To give you a useful example for this: Think of a software that does not log normally, but when your customer calls and asks for help because he has a problem, all you send to him is an updated XML config file, and now he has logging enabled, and your support can use the log files to help your customer.
And now, when you replace names a little bit, you end up with a simple implementation of a Service Locator, which is one of two patterns for Inversion of Control (since you invert control over who decides what exact class to instantiate).
All in all this reduces dependencies in your code, but now all your code has a dependency to the central, single service locator.
Dependency injection is now the next step in this line: Just get rid of this single dependency to the service locator: Instead of various classes asking the service locator for an implementation for a specific interface, you - once again - revert control over who instantiates what.
With dependency injection, your Database class now has a constructor that requires a parameter of type ICanLog:
public Database(ICanLog logger) { ... }
Now your database always has a logger to use, but it does not know any more where this logger comes from.
And this is where a DI framework comes into play: You configure your mappings once again, and then ask your DI framework to instantiate your application for you. As the Application class requires an ICanPersistData implementation, an instance of Database is injected - but for that it must first create an instance of the kind of logger which is configured for ICanLog. And so on ...
So, to cut a long story short: Dependency injection is one of two ways of how to remove dependencies in your code. It is very useful for configuration changes after compile-time, and it is a great thing for unit testing (as it makes it very easy to inject stubs and / or mocks).
In practice, there are things you can not do without a service locator (e.g., if you do not know in advance how many instances you do need of a specific interface: A DI framework always injects only one instance per parameter, but you can call a service locator inside a loop, of course), hence most often each DI framework also provides a service locator.
But basically, that's it.
P.S.: What I described here is a technique called constructor injection, there is also property injection where not constructor parameters, but properties are being used for defining and resolving dependencies. Think of property injection as an optional dependency, and of constructor injection as mandatory dependencies. But discussion on this is beyond the scope of this question.
I think a lot of times people get confused about the difference between dependency injection and a dependency injection framework (or a container as it is often called).
Dependency injection is a very simple concept. Instead of this code:
public class A {
private B b;
public A() {
this.b = new B(); // A *depends on* B
}
public void DoSomeStuff() {
// Do something with B here
}
}
public static void Main(string[] args) {
A a = new A();
a.DoSomeStuff();
}
you write code like this:
public class A {
private B b;
public A(B b) { // A now takes its dependencies as arguments
this.b = b; // look ma, no "new"!
}
public void DoSomeStuff() {
// Do something with B here
}
}
public static void Main(string[] args) {
B b = new B(); // B is constructed here instead
A a = new A(b);
a.DoSomeStuff();
}
And that's it. Seriously. This gives you a ton of advantages. Two important ones are the ability to control functionality from a central place (the Main() function) instead of spreading it throughout your program, and the ability to more easily test each class in isolation (because you can pass mocks or other faked objects into its constructor instead of a real value).
The drawback, of course, is that you now have one mega-function that knows about all the classes used by your program. That's what DI frameworks can help with. But if you're having trouble understanding why this approach is valuable, I'd recommend starting with manual dependency injection first, so you can better appreciate what the various frameworks out there can do for you.
As the other answers stated, dependency injection is a way to create your dependencies outside of the class that uses it. You inject them from the outside, and take control about their creation away from the inside of your class. This is also why dependency injection is a realization of the Inversion of control (IoC) principle.
IoC is the principle, where DI is the pattern. The reason that you might "need more than one logger" is never actually met, as far as my experience goes, but the actually reason is, that you really need it, whenever you test something. An example:
My Feature:
When I look at an offer, I want to mark that I looked at it automatically, so that I don't forget to do so.
You might test this like this:
[Test]
public void ShouldUpdateTimeStamp
{
// Arrange
var formdata = { . . . }
// System under Test
var weasel = new OfferWeasel();
// Act
var offer = weasel.Create(formdata)
// Assert
offer.LastUpdated.Should().Be(new DateTime(2013,01,13,13,01,0,0));
}
So somewhere in the OfferWeasel, it builds you an offer Object like this:
public class OfferWeasel
{
public Offer Create(Formdata formdata)
{
var offer = new Offer();
offer.LastUpdated = DateTime.Now;
return offer;
}
}
The problem here is, that this test will most likely always fail, since the date that is being set will differ from the date being asserted, even if you just put DateTime.Now in the test code it might be off by a couple of milliseconds and will therefore always fail. A better solution now would be to create an interface for this, that allows you to control what time will be set:
public interface IGotTheTime
{
DateTime Now {get;}
}
public class CannedTime : IGotTheTime
{
public DateTime Now {get; set;}
}
public class ActualTime : IGotTheTime
{
public DateTime Now {get { return DateTime.Now; }}
}
public class OfferWeasel
{
private readonly IGotTheTime _time;
public OfferWeasel(IGotTheTime time)
{
_time = time;
}
public Offer Create(Formdata formdata)
{
var offer = new Offer();
offer.LastUpdated = _time.Now;
return offer;
}
}
The Interface is the abstraction. One is the REAL thing, and the other one allows you to fake some time where it is needed. The test can then be changed like this:
[Test]
public void ShouldUpdateTimeStamp
{
// Arrange
var date = new DateTime(2013, 01, 13, 13, 01, 0, 0);
var formdata = { . . . }
var time = new CannedTime { Now = date };
// System under test
var weasel= new OfferWeasel(time);
// Act
var offer = weasel.Create(formdata)
// Assert
offer.LastUpdated.Should().Be(date);
}
Like this, you applied the "inversion of control" principle, by injecting a dependency (getting the current time). The main reason to do this is for easier isolated unit testing, there are other ways of doing it. For example, an interface and a class here is unnecessary since in C# functions can be passed around as variables, so instead of an interface you could use a Func<DateTime> to achieve the same. Or, if you take a dynamic approach, you just pass any object that has the equivalent method (duck typing), and you don't need an interface at all.
You will hardly ever need more than one logger. Nonetheless, dependency injection is essential for statically typed code such as Java or C#.
And...
It should also be noted that an object can only properly fulfill its purpose at runtime, if all its dependencies are available, so there is not much use in setting up property injection. In my opinion, all dependencies should be satisfied when the constructor is being called, so constructor-injection is the thing to go with.
I think the classic answer is to create a more decoupled application, which has no knowledge of which implementation will be used during runtime.
For example, we're a central payment provider, working with many payment providers around the world. However, when a request is made, I have no idea which payment processor I'm going to call. I could program one class with a ton of switch cases, such as:
class PaymentProcessor{
private String type;
public PaymentProcessor(String type){
this.type = type;
}
public void authorize(){
if (type.equals(Consts.PAYPAL)){
// Do this;
}
else if(type.equals(Consts.OTHER_PROCESSOR)){
// Do that;
}
}
}
Now imagine that now you'll need to maintain all this code in a single class because it's not decoupled properly, you can imagine that for every new processor you'll support, you'll need to create a new if // switch case for every method, this only gets more complicated, however, by using Dependency Injection (or Inversion of Control - as it's sometimes called, meaning that whoever controls the running of the program is known only at runtime, and not complication), you could achieve something very neat and maintainable.
class PaypalProcessor implements PaymentProcessor{
public void authorize(){
// Do PayPal authorization
}
}
class OtherProcessor implements PaymentProcessor{
public void authorize(){
// Do other processor authorization
}
}
class PaymentFactory{
public static PaymentProcessor create(String type){
switch(type){
case Consts.PAYPAL;
return new PaypalProcessor();
case Consts.OTHER_PROCESSOR;
return new OtherProcessor();
}
}
}
interface PaymentProcessor{
void authorize();
}
** The code won't compile, I know :)
The main reason to use DI is that you want to put the responsibility of the knowledge of the implementation where the knowledge is there. The idea of DI is very much inline with encapsulation and design by interface.
If the front end asks from the back end for some data, then is it unimportant for the front end how the back end resolves that question. That is up to the requesthandler.
That is already common in OOP for a long time. Many times creating code pieces like:
I_Dosomething x = new Impl_Dosomething();
The drawback is that the implementation class is still hardcoded, hence has the front end the knowledge which implementation is used. DI takes the design by interface one step further, that the only thing the front end needs to know is the knowledge of the interface.
In between the DYI and DI is the pattern of a service locator, because the front end has to provide a key (present in the registry of the service locator) to lets its request become resolved.
Service locator example:
I_Dosomething x = ServiceLocator.returnDoing(String pKey);
DI example:
I_Dosomething x = DIContainer.returnThat();
One of the requirements of DI is that the container must be able to find out which class is the implementation of which interface. Hence does a DI container require strongly typed design and only one implementation for each interface at the same time. If you need more implementations of an interface at the same time (like a calculator), you need the service locator or factory design pattern.
D(b)I: Dependency Injection and Design by Interface.
This restriction is not a very big practical problem though. The benefit of using D(b)I is that it serves communication between the client and the provider. An interface is a perspective on an object or a set of behaviours. The latter is crucial here.
I prefer the administration of service contracts together with D(b)I in coding. They should go together. The use of D(b)I as a technical solution without organizational administration of service contracts is not very beneficial in my point of view, because DI is then just an extra layer of encapsulation. But when you can use it together with organizational administration you can really make use of the organizing principle D(b)I offers.
It can help you in the long run to structure communication with the client and other technical departments in topics as testing, versioning and the development of alternatives. When you have an implicit interface as in a hardcoded class, then is it much less communicable over time then when you make it explicit using D(b)I. It all boils down to maintenance, which is over time and not at a time. :-)
Quite frankly, I believe people use these Dependency Injection libraries/frameworks because they just know how to do things in runtime, as opposed to load time. All this crazy machinery can be substituted by setting your CLASSPATH environment variable (or other language equivalent, like PYTHONPATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH) to point to your alternative implementations (all with the same name) of a particular class. So in the accepted answer you'd just leave your code like
var logger = new Logger() //sane, simple code
And the appropriate logger will be instantiated because the JVM (or whatever other runtime or .so loader you have) would fetch it from the class configured via the environment variable mentioned above.
No need to make everything an interface, no need to have the insanity of spawning broken objects to have stuff injected into them, no need to have insane constructors with every piece of internal machinery exposed to the world. Just use the native functionality of whatever language you're using instead of coming up with dialects that won't work in any other project.
P.S.: This is also true for testing/mocking. You can very well just set your environment to load the appropriate mock class, in load time, and skip the mocking framework madness.
I have an application using the Entity Framework code first. My setup is that I have a core service which all other services inherit from. The core service contains the following code:
public static DatabaseContext db = new DatabaseContext();
public CoreService()
{
db.Database.Initialize(force: false);
}
Then, another class will inherit from CoreService and when it needs to query the database will just run some code such as:
db.Products.Where(blah => blah.IsEnabled);
However, I seem to be getting conflicting stories as to which is best.
Some people advise NOT to do what I'm doing.
Other people say that you should define the context for each class (rather than use a base class to instantiate it)
Others say that for EVERY database call, I should wrap it in a using block. I've never seen this in any of the examples from Microsoft.
Can anyone clarify?
I'm currently at a point where refactoring is possible and quite quick, so I'd like some general advice if possible.
You should wrap one context per web request. Hold it open for as long as you need it, then get rid of it when you are finished. That's what the using is for.
Do NOT wrap up your context in a Singleton. That is not a good idea.
If you are working with clients like WinForms then I think you would wrap the context around each form but that's not my area.
Also, make sure you know when you are going to be actually executing against your datasource so you don't end up enumerating multiple times when you might only need to do so once to work with the results.
Lastly, you have seen this practice from MS as lots of the ADO stuff supports being wrapped in a using but hardly anyone realises this.
I suggest to use design principle "prefer composition over inheritance".
You can have the reference of the database context in your base class.
Implement a singleton for getting the DataContext and assign the datacontext to this reference.
The conflicts you get are not related to sharing the context between classes but are caused by the static declaration of your context. If you make the context an instance field of your service class, so that every service instance gets its own context, there should be no issues.
The using pattern you mention is not required but instead you should make sure that context.Dispose() is called at the service disposal.
Please be gentle, I'm a newb to this IoC/MVC thing but I am trying. I understand the value of DI for testing purposes and how IoC resolves dependencies at run-time and have been through several examples that make sense for your standard CRUD operations...
I'm starting a new project and cannot come up with a clean way to accomplish user permissions. My website is mostly secured with any pages with functionality (except signup, FAQ, about us, etc) behind a login. I have a custom identity that has several extra properties which control access to data... So....
Using Ninject, I've bound a concrete type* to a method (Bind<MyIdentity>().ToMethod(c => MyIdentity.GetIdentity()); so that when I add MyIdentity to a constructor, it is injected based on the results of the method call.
That all works well. Is it appropriate to (from the GetIdentity() method) directly query the request cookies object (via FormsAuthentication)? In testing the controllers, I can pass in an identity, but the GetIdentity() method will be essentially untestable...
Also, in the GetIdentity() method, I will query the database. Should I manually create a concrete instance of a repository?
Or is there a better way all together?
I think you are reasonably on the right track, since you abstracted away database communication and ASP.NET dependencies from your unit tests. Don't worry that you can't test everything in your tests. There will always be lines of code in your application that are untestable. The GetIdentity is a good example. Somewhere in your application you need to communicate with framework specific API and this code can not be covered by your unit tests.
There might still be room for improvement though. While an untested GetIdentity isn't a problem, the fact that it is actually callable by the application. It just hangs there, waiting for someone to accidentally call it. So why not abstract the creation of identities. For instance, create an abstract factory that knows how to get the right identity for the current context. You can inject this factory, instead of injecting the identity itself. This allows you to have an implementation defined near the application's composition root and outside reach of the rest of the application. Besides that, the code communicates more clearly what is happening. Nobody has to ask "which identity do I actually get?", because it will be clear by the method on the factory they call.
Here's an example:
public interface IIdentityProvider
{
// Bit verbose, but veeeery clear,
// but pick another name if you like,
MyIdentity GetIdentityForCurrentUser();
}
In your composition root you can have an implementation of this:
private sealed class AspNetIdentityProvider : IIdentityProvider
{
public MyIdentity GetIdentityForCurrentUser()
{
// here the code of the MyIdentity.GetIdentity() method.
}
}
As a trick I sometimes have my test objects implement both the factory and product, just for convenience during unit tesing. For instance:
private sealed class FakeMyIdentity
: FakeMyIdentity, IIdentityProvider
{
public MyIdentity GetIdentityForCurrentUser()
{
// just returning itself.
return this;
}
}
This way you can just inject a FakeMyIdentity in a constructor that expects an IIdentityProvider. I found out that this doesn’t sacrifice readability of the tests (which is important).
Of course you want to have as little code as possible in the AspNetIdentityProvider, because you can't test it (automatically). Also make sure that your MyIdentity class doesn't have any dependency on any framework specific parts. If so you need to abstract that as well.
I hope this makes sense.
There are two things I'd kinda do differently here...
I'd use a custom IPrincipal object with all the properties required for your authentication needs. Then I'd use that in conjunction with custom cookie creation and the AuthenticateRequest event to avoid database calls on every request.
If my IPrincipal / Identity was required inside another class, I'd pass it as a method parameter rather than have it as a dependency on the class it's self.
When going down this route I use custom model binders so they are then parameters to my actions rather than magically appearing inside my action methods.
NOTE: This is just the way I've been doing things, so take with a grain of salt.
Sorry, this probably throws up more questions than answers. Feel free to ask more questions about my approach.