Learning ASP.Net MVC series:
- Setup
- MVC Concepts
- Authentication
- Entity Framework Fundamentals
- Upgrading project to .NET Core 1.1
- Dependency Injection and Services
Previously on Learning ASP.Net MVC...
Started with the idea of a project that would use user configurable queries to do Google searches, store the information in the results and then perform various data analysis on them and display them based on what the user wants. However, I first implemented a Google authentication and then went to write some theoretical posts. Lastly, I've upgraded the project from .NET Core 1.0 to version 1.1.
Well, it took me a while to get here because I was at a crossroads. I like the idea of dependency injectable services to do data access. At the same time there is the entire Entity Framework tutorial path that kind of wants to strongly integrate EF with my projects. I mean, if I have a service that gives me the list of all items in the database and then I want to get only a few items, it would be bad design to filter the entire list. As such, I would have to write a different method that allows me to get the items based on some kind of filters. On the other hand, Entity Framework code looks just like that "give me all you have, filtered by this" which is then translated into an efficient query to the database. One possibility would be to have my service return
IQueryable <T>, so I could also use the system to generate the database code on the fly.
The Design
I've decided on the service architecture, against an EF type IQueryable way, because I want to be able to replace that service with anything, including something that doesn't work with a database or something that doesn't know how to dynamically create queries. Also, the idea that the service methods will describe exactly what I want appeals to me more than avoiding a bit of duplicated code.
Another thing to define now is the method through which I will implement the dependency injection. Being the control freak that I am, I would go with installing my own library, something like
SimpleInjector, and configure it myself and use it explicitly. However,
ASP.Net Core has dependency injection included out of the box, so I will use that.
As defined, the project needs queries to pass on to Google and a storage service for the results. It needs data services to manage these entities, as well as a service to abstract Google itself. The data gathering operation itself cannot be a simple
REST call, since it might take a while, it must be a background task. The data analysis as well. So we need a sort of job manager.
As per a good structured design, the data objects will be stored in a separate project, as well as the interfaces for the services we will be using.
Some code, please!
Well, start with the code of the project so far:
GitHub and let's get coding.
Before finding a solution to actually run the background code in the context of ASP.Net, let's write it inside a class. I am going to add a folder called
Jobs and add a class in it called
QueryProcessor with a method
ProcessQueries. The code will be self explanatory, I hope.
public void ProcessQueries()
{
var now = _timeService.Now;
var queries = _queryDataService.GetUnprocessed(now);
var contentItems = queries.AsParallel().WithDegreeOfParallelism(3)
.SelectMany(q => _contentService.Query(q.Text));
_contentDataService.Update(contentItems);
}
So we get the time - from a service, of course - and request the unprocessed queries for that time, then we extract the content items for each query, which then are updated in the database. The idea here is that, for the first time a query is defined or when the interval from the last time the query was processed, the query will be sent to the content service from which content items will be received. These items will be stored in the database.
Now, I've kept the code as concise as possible: there is no indication yet of any implementation detail and I've written as little code as I need to express my intention. Yet, what are all these services? What is a time service? what is a content service? Where are they defined? In order to enable dependency injection, we will populate all of these fields from the constructor of the query processor. Here is how the class would look in its entirety:
using ContentAggregator.Interfaces;
using System.Linq;
namespace ContentAggregator.Jobs
{
public class QueryProcessor
{
private readonly IContentDataService _contentDataService;
private readonly IContentService _contentService;
private readonly IQueryDataService _queryDataService;
private readonly ITimeService _timeService;
public QueryProcessor(ITimeService timeService, IQueryDataService queryDataService, IContentDataService contentDataService, IContentService contentService)
{
_timeService = timeService;
_queryDataService = queryDataService;
_contentDataService = contentDataService;
_contentService = contentService;
}
public void ProcessQueries()
{
var now = _timeService.Now;
var queries = _queryDataService.GetUnprocessed(now);
var contentItems = queries.AsParallel().WithDegreeOfParallelism(3)
.SelectMany(q => _contentService.Query(q.Text));
_contentDataService.Update(contentItems);
}
}
}
Note that the services are only defined as interfaces which we declare in a separate project called ContentAggregator.Interfaces, referred above in the usings block.
Let's ignore the job processor mechanism for a moment and just run ProcessQueries in a test method in the main controller. For this I will have to make dependency injection work and implement the interfaces. For brevity I will do so in the main project, although it would probably be a good idea to do it in a separate
ContentAggregator.Implementations project. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. First make the code work, then arrange it all nice, in the refactoring phase.
Implementing the services
I will create mock services first, in order to test the code as it is, so the following implementations just do as little as possible while still following the interface signature.
public class ContentDataService : IContentDataService
{
private readonly static StringBuilder _sb;
static ContentDataService()
{
_sb = new StringBuilder();
}
public void Update(IEnumerable<ContentItem> contentItems)
{
foreach (var contentItem in contentItems)
{
_sb.AppendLine($"{contentItem.FinalUrl}:{contentItem.Title}");
}
}
public static string Output
{
get { return _sb.ToString(); }
}
}
public class ContentService : IContentService
{
private readonly ITimeService _timeService;
public ContentService(ITimeService timeService)
{
_timeService = timeService;
}
public IEnumerable<ContentItem> Query(string text)
{
yield return
new ContentItem
{
OriginalUrl = "http://original.url",
FinalUrl = "https://final.url",
Title = "Mock Title",
Description = "Mock Description",
CreationTime = _timeService.Now,
Time = new DateTime(2017, 03, 26),
ContentType = "text/html",
Error = null,
Content = "Mock Content"
};
}
}
public class QueryDataService : IQueryDataService
{
public IEnumerable<Query> GetUnprocessed(DateTime now)
{
yield return new Query
{
Text="Some query"
};
}
}
public class TimeService : ITimeService
{
public DateTime Now
{
get
{
return DateTime.UtcNow;
}
}
}
Now all I have to do is declare the binding between interface and implementation. The magic happens in
ConfigureServices, in
Startup.cs:
services.AddTransient<ITimeService, TimeService>();
services.AddTransient<IContentDataService, ContentDataService>();
services.AddTransient<IContentService, ContentService>();
services.AddTransient<IQueryDataService, QueryDataService>();
They are all transient, meaning that for each request of an implementation the system will just create a new instance. Another popular method is
AddSingleton.
Using dependency injection
So, now I have to instantiate my query processor and run
ProcessQueries.
One way is to set QueryProcessor as a service. I extract an interface, I add a new binding and then I give an interface as a parameter of my controller constructor:
[Authorize]
public class HomeController : Controller
{
private readonly IQueryProcessor _queryProcessor;
public HomeController(IQueryProcessor queryProcessor)
{
_queryProcessor = queryProcessor;
}
public IActionResult Index()
{
return View();
}
[HttpGet("/test")]
public string Test()
{
_queryProcessor.ProcessQueries();
return ContentDataService.Output;
}
}
In fact, I don't even have to declare an interface. I can just use
services.AddTransient<QueryProcessor>(); in ConfigureServices and it works as a parameter to the controller.
But what if I want to use it directly, resolve it manually, without injecting it in the controller? One can use the injection of a IServiceProvider instead. Here is an example:
[Authorize]
public class HomeController : Controller
{
private readonly IServiceProvider _serviceProvider;
public HomeController(IServiceProvider serviceProvider)
{
_serviceProvider = serviceProvider;
}
public IActionResult Index()
{
return View();
}
[HttpGet("/test")]
public string Test()
{
var queryProcessor = _serviceProvider.GetService<QueryProcessor>();
queryProcessor.ProcessQueries();
return ContentDataService.Output;
}
}
Yet you still need to use services.Add... in ConfigureServices and inject the service provider in the constructor of the controller.
There is a way of doing it completely separately like this:
var serviceProvider = new ServiceCollection()
.AddTransient<ITimeService, TimeService>()
.AddTransient<IContentDataService, ContentDataService>()
.AddTransient<IContentService, ContentService>()
.AddTransient<IQueryDataService, QueryDataService>()
.AddTransient<QueryProcessor>()
.BuildServiceProvider();
var queryProcessor = serviceProvider.GetService<QueryProcessor>();
This would be the way to encapsulate the ASP.Net Dependency Injection in another object, maybe in
a console application, but clearly it would be pointless in our application.
The complete source code after these modifications can be found
here. Test the functionality by going to
/test on your local server after you start the app.
I just read a very cool article (Understanding Default Parameters in Javascript) and my takeaway is this smart piece of code to enforce that a parameter is specified: