In Corda, what should `PartyAndReference.reference` be set to? - corda

When defining a FungibleAsset in Corda, you need to provide an issuer reference in the form of a PartyAndReference.
PartyAndReference is a combination of:
party: AbstractParty, the on-ledger identity of the party issuing the asset
reference: OpaqueBytes
What should this reference: OpaqueBytes field be set to?

The JavaDocs state that the reference field is supposed to represent "something being stored or issued by a party e.g. in a vault or (more likely) on their normal ledger".
However, if two FungibleAsset states have different reference fields but are otherwise completely identical, they are no longer considered fungible. This is because there is no logic provided for combining the different reference fields into a single combined reference field.
This feature will likely be redesigned in the future. In the short-run, I'd advise setting this field to a dummy value shared across all of the fungible assets you issue, such as OpaqueBytes.of(0).

Related

Write OCL restrictions related to associations with other classes

How do you model the following restriction?
A place is popular if it has been bookmarked by 2 or more than 2 users.
Here the corresponding uml diagram:
uml
I tried several ways, for example:
context place inv: place.popular = (self.user.place.popular>=2)
but nothing worked well...
The constraint that you expressed is an interesting start but does not work because self.user in the place context is a collection. Your expression moreover attempts to use popular as if it were an integer.
If there would be an unambiguous user, you’d just need to check its size():
context place inv:
place.popular = (self.user->size()>1)
Unfortunately, there are two associations with User: one for the favorites (bookmarks) and for for historic (past visits whether they appreciated or not). This makes that expression ambiguous. To disambiguate, in absence of a role name (name at the association end), you’ll need to qualify the user with the association name:
context place inv:
place.popular = (self.favorites::user->size()>1)
(Btw, in case of absence of association name, you'd need to use the default name A_place_user instead of favorites).
See also section 7.5.3 of the OCL specifications for more information about navigating associations.
Edit: more complex navigations**:
You could also navigate to properties of associated classes. It works like the navigation above, but with the help of the collect() operation. You can then perform collection oprations such as sum()
context route inv:
self.totalDistance = self.step->collect(distanceFromPreviousStep)->sum()
Navigating to a specific object in a collection of linked objects is more delicate. In the case of the steps, we see that the association is ordered (by the way, it should be {ordered} and not «ordered»). This allows to use last() to get the last element in the given order:
context route inv:
self.destination::place = self.step->last().place

API Platform custom IRI with value objects

I am currently trying to create a custom IRI for one of my entities in API Platform.
I know there is page in the documentation describing how to use a custom IRI (https://api-platform.com/docs/core/identifiers/), but I can't get it working.
My entity uses a value object for the id (currently used for IRI) and also for the name (should be used for IRI). But the values themself are priviate and scalar in the entity.
API Platform seems to get the information what should be used as the identifier, from my XML Doctrine mapping. I already tried to overwrite it by usung annotations, attributues and YAML definitions. Without luck.
The returned error reads:
preg_match(): Argument #2 ($subject) must be of type string
(at this point it receives the value object instead of the actual value)
best regards,
spigandromeda
I solved my problem.
To explain the solution, I have to dig a little into API Platform response generation.
API platform generates an IRI for every entity it returns (colelction and item operation)
it's using the Symfony router go generate the URI
all the necessary information can draw API Platform from different sources (YAML, XML, annotations, attributes)
the information include the identifier(s) defined for the entities resource
API Platform gets the value for the identifier via Symfony property accessor
because the property accessor is using getters before accessing private properties via reflection, it will return the VO
an ordinary VO cannot be used by the Symfony URL generator to create the URL
As I explained, I am using a VO for my Id as well. So I tried to figure out why it was working with the Id VO but not with the name VO.
Simple answer: the Id VO implemented the __toString method and the name VO didn't. So the solution was to let the name VO implement this method as well.
It was interesing to dig into the internal process of API Platform, but I also feel a little stupid :D

oData v4 - ordering outer entity on property in related one-to-many entities

I have an oData model with a couple of one-to-many relationship, say person->addresses and person->driving-licences. I would like to be able to sort the result set based on properties in the address entity and driving licence entity. As there could be more than one address, I would initially select a single item from the addresses set, based on a property called IsPrimary. As there could be more that one driving licence, I would select the 'UK' driving licence. Is this possible?
I was hoping I could do something like:
/people?$expand=addresses($filter=isPrimary eq true),drivinglicences($filter=country eq 'UK')&$orderby=addresses/postcode,drivinglicences/active
Unfortunately I get the following error:
"The query specified in the URI is not valid. The parent value for a property access of a property 'isPrimary' is not a single value. Property access can only be applied to a single value."
Does anyone know if what I'm trying to do is supported by the spec? Or whether it is an issue with my query? Or whether it is an issue with the .NET library.
I'm using:
Microsoft.AspNet.OData - 7.2.3
Many Thanks.
What you see here is by design, or rather not supported by the specification, the error message even highlights the only type of expressions supported:
The query specified in the URI is not valid. The parent value for a property access of a property 'isPrimary' is not a single value. Property access can only be applied to a single value.
So the simplest solution is to modify the API either to include a Function bound to the people collection that applies the $filter or $order directly, or a Function that returns the data in a new shape, one that only has perhaps a singleton PrimaryAddress property. How you include driving license in this result is up to you, it could even be a parameter to the function, perhaps your people controller has a queryable function with this signature:
[EnableQuery]
public IHttpActionResult WithLicences(string countryCode)
However that is out of the scope of OPs question about specific syntax support
Although it seems like an important feature, we must remember that $select (Projection) and $filter are evaluated at different points in time, OData queries follow a similar execution sequence to SQL however the filter criteria and $orderby are evaluated separately, and the projection of the resultset is the last evaluation to be applied.
Due to $filter and $orderby being applied independently, neither concept is even aware of the other and as such neither can reference or assume to be applied before the other.
You can prove this by specifying a field in the $orderby and/or $filter that is not included in the $select, you can even reference singleton navigation fields that are not included in an $expand and the query will evaluate correctly.
The OData spec is similar to a law document, in that to properly understand and apply it we need to understand the original intent of the authors. We can get an initial understanding from the early listing of Addressing Entities
Addressing Entities describes functions that can be bound to collections or entities that return either a single entity or a collection of entities
By allowing special provision of custom functions to be applied the authors are encouraging API designers to provide natural extensions to their resource endpoints that can facilitate the execution of pre-determined queries that may be otherwise complex or problematic to express in pure OData query syntax.
In other words, we are encouraged to customise our APIs to make them easier for the end process to consume, and to guide the consuming developer to make the best use of the API, they shouldn't have to discover everything from first principals.
To achieve OPs type of query in pure SQL would still require either a nested lookup, CTE or self join... advanced syntax. In OData v4, the specification does not provide a syntax for targeting specific items within a collection for path expressions (of which $orderby derives from)
5.1.1.15 Path Expressions
Properties and navigation properties of the entity type of the set of resources that are addressed by the request URL can be used as operands or function parameters, as shown in the preceding examples.
Properties of complex properties can be used via the same syntax as in resource paths, i.e. by specifying the name of a complex property, followed by a forward slash (/) and the name of a property of the complex property, and so on,
Properties and navigation properties of entities related with a target cardinality 0..1 or 1 can be used by specifying the navigation property, followed by a forward slash (/) and the name of a property of the related entity, and so on.
If a complex property is null, or no entity is related (in case of target cardinality 0..1), its value, and the values of its components, are treated as null.
RE: I couldn't find anything explicit in the spec. :)
That is the very thing about the OData specification,the specification does not list what is not supported, only what should be supported. So by omission, if you cannot find a reference to how to do something, then that something is not required to be supported.
Introduction http://docs.oasis-open.org/odata/odata/v4.01/odata-v4.01-part2-url-conventions.html#sec_Introduction ... This specification defines a set of recommended (but not required) rules for constructing URLs to identify the data and metadata exposed by an OData service as well as a set of reserved URL query string operators, which if accepted by an OData service, MUST be implemented as required by this document.
This has been on ongoing discussion held in may threads, recently https://stackoverflow.com/a/55324393/1690217
Many people complain that this is surely a fundamental feature of a data access platform, however it is important to respect the original intent of the OData platform and keep our APIs simple by providing customised endpoints to suit our business domain.

Content based routing based on calculated property in BizTalk

I need to route a message based on a calculated property/field, but the same attribute/element does not exist in my outgoing schema. Is this possible?
Eg. Suppose I get an inbound message with containing employee name and date of birth. I calculate the age of the employee in orchestration or using functoid in maps. Now I want to send the message based on a condition on age, but the age property does not exist in the outgoing schema.
So Is content based routing possible on calculated properties?
You need a property schema with a property called "Age" and make sure you set this property as "MessageContextPropertyBase" by changing "Property Schema Base" from "Properties" of the node Age. Once you have the property schema then you can promote this property after your calculation either in Orchestration or in a custom receive pipeline component.
If you go with an Orchestration approach, then you need to create a correlation type with Age property and initialize the correlation on Send shape. Make sure you also set Age property on your outgoing message with Message_1(...). Deploy the property schema before using it in orchestration. if you are creating it in a different assembly then add a reference to it.
Or You can also create a custom pipeline component and promote the same Age property using Promote method in Execute method.
I'm pretty sure that promoted properties need to be part of the message. But you could always create a new message type which imports the original schema but with your new fields included and route based on that. Then you can map back to the original message type on an Outgoing map in your Send Port.
You will of course need to make sure that this new message passes through a pipeline with property promotion such as XMLReceive. So your Orch will need to handle that or alternatively, you could map to this new message in your Receive Port and do your routing before this Orch that you speak of. Difficult to say the best approach with knowing the specifics.
Yeah you can calculate the age and route the inbound message with a local variable.

ASP.NET MVC routing based on data store values

How would you tackle this problem:
I have data in my data store. Each item has information about:
URL = an arbitrary number of first route segments that will be used with requests
some item type = display will be related to this type (read on)
title = used for example in navigation around my application
etc.
Since each item can have an arbitrary number of segments, I created a custom route, that allows me to handle these kind of requests without using the default route and having a single greedy route parameter.
Item type will actually define in what way should content of a particular item be displayed to the client. I was thinking of creating just as many controllers to not have too much code in a single controller action.
So how would you do this in ASP.NET MVC or what would you suggest would be the most feasible way of doing this?
Edit: A few more details
My items are stored in a database. Since they can have very different types (not inheritable) I thought of creating just as many controllers. But questions arise:
How should I create these controllers on each request since they are related to some dynamic data? I could create my own Controller factory or Route handler or possibly some other extension points as well, but which one would be best?
I want to use MVC basic functionality of using things like Html.ActionLink(action, controller, linkText) or make my own extension like Html.ActionLink(itemType, linkText) to make it even more flexible, so Action link should create correct routes based on Route data (because that's what's going on in the background - it goes through routes top down and see which one returns a resulting URL).
I was thinking of having a configuration of relation between itemType and route values (controller, action, defaults). Defaults setting may be tricky since defaults should be deserialized from a configuration string into an object (that may as well be complex). So I thought of maybe even having a configurable relation between itemType and class type that implements a certain interface like written in the example below.
My routes can be changed (or some new ones added) in the data store. But new types should not be added. Configuration would provide these scenarios, because they would link types with route defaults.
Example:
Interface definition:
public interface IRouteDefaults
{
object GetRouteDefaults();
}
Interface implementation example:
public class DefaultType : IRouteDefaults
{
public object GetRouteDefaults()
{
return new {
controller = "Default",
action = "Show",
itemComplex = new Person {
Name = "John Doe",
IsAdmin = true
}
}
}
Configuration example:
<customRoutes>
<route name="Cars" type="TypeEnum.Car" defaults="MyApp.Routing.Defaults.Car, MyApp.Routing" />
<route name="Fruits" type="TypeEnum.Fruit" defaults="MyApp.Routing.Defaults.Fruit, MyApp.Routing" />
<route name="Shoes" type="TypeEnum.Shoe" defaults="MyApp.Routing.Defaults.Shoe, MyApp.Routing" />
...
<route name="Others" type="TypeEnum.Other" defaults="MyApp.Routing.Defaults.DefaultType, MyApp.Routing" />
</customRoutes>
To address performance hit I can cache my items and work with in-memory data and avoid accessing the database on each request. These items tend to not change too often. I could cache them for like 60 minutes without degrading application experience.
There is no significant performance issue if you define a complex routing dictionary, or just have one generic routing entry and handle all the cases yourself. Code is code
Even if your data types are not inheritable, most likely you have common display patterns. e.g.
List of titles and summary text
item display, with title, image, description
etc
If you can breakdown your site into a finite number of display patterns, then you only need to make those finite controllers and views
You them provide a services layer which is selected by the routing parameter than uses a data transfer object (DTO) pattern to take the case data and move it into the standard data structure for the view
The general concept you mention is not at all uncommon and there are a few things to consider:
The moment I hear about URL routing taking a dependency on data coming from a database, the first thing I think about is performance. One way to alleviate potentialy performance concerns is to use the built in Route class and have a very generic pattern, such as "somethingStatic/{*everythingElse}". This way if the URL doesn't start with "somethingStatic" it will immediately fail to match and routing will continue to the next route. Then you'll get all the interesting data as the catch-all "everythingElse" parameter.
You can then associate this route with a custom route handler that derives from MvcRouteHandler and overrides GetHttpHandler to go to the database, make sense of the "everythingElse" value, and perhaps dynamically determine which controller and action should be used to handle this request. You can get/set the routing values by accessing requestContext.RouteData.Values.
Whether to use one controller and one action or many of one or many of each is a discussion unto itself. The question boils down to how many different types of data do you have? Are they mostly similar (they're all books, but some are hardcover and some are softcover)? Completely different (some are cars, some are books, and some are houses)? The answer to this should be the same answer you'd have if this were a computer programming class and you had to decide from an OOP perspective whether they all have a base class and their own derives types, or whether they could be easily represented by one common type. If they're all different types then I'd recommend different controllers - especially if each requires a distinct set of actions. For example, for a house you might want to see an inspection report. But for a book you might want to preview the first five pages and read a book review. These items have nothing in common: The actions for one would never be used for the other.
The problem described in #3 can also occur in reverse, though: What if you have 1,000 different object types? Do you want 1,000 different controllers? Without having any more information, I'd say for this scenario 1,000 controllers is a bit too much.
Hopefully these thoughts help guide you to the right solution. If you can provide more information about some of the specific scenarios you have (such as what kind of objects these are and what actions can apply to them) then the answer can be refined as well.

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