I've a problem about ASP.NET MVC5 and Entity Framework.
I work with an existing software database.
There is a table named "CLI" with lots of fields.
In my website, I've an Entity named "CLI".
A "CLI" can be a client or a delivery address (it's the same table). The only difference is the value of one field (C_LIV_SEUL)
I've a partial class "CLI" with DataAnnontations likes "Required" etc. on multiple fields.
The problem is that a Client and a Delivery Address doesn't have the same "Required".
Per example, for a Client, the field "C_NOM" is required.
For the Delivery Adress, "C_NOM" is not required.
In my view, when I've a form to update a Delivery Address, I don't display "C_NOM" because it isn't required.
But when I've a view to update a Client, I display "C_NOM" because it's required.
How can I do this ?
I think about inheritance, but I can't apply changes on datacontext (because it isn't a "CLI" entity), or add an Entity with the type "Client" or "DeliveryAddress"...
I also try to work with the ModelState (ModelState.Remove("C_NOM")), but when I SaveChanges the error persists.
Thank you all for help!
In order to register, users have to select a their account name created by my moderators. That means that a moderators have to create an account name before the user registers.
To do so, I made a first entity, let's call it "Member", that has a field "account". Then I added to this entity the boolean field "bound" that is set to false by default.
What I want to do is to set this field "bound" to true when someone registers after he selected his account name and fill the FOSUserBundle required fields (username, passwords, email...).
I tried to follow the documentation of "overriding controllers", but I'm getting an error (You have requested a non-existent service "fos_user.registration.form".) and this is where I'm stucked.
Using controller events can maybe help me, but I do not know which is the best solution.
If anyone has a solution to my problem, I'll be really grateful.
You should used the controller event to hook after the registration process, and more specifically the
REGISTRATION_COMPLETED event (if I remember correctly).
What is the above property for and how to set it? I have researched Google, but all I got was the MSDN documentation for the corresponding .NET class, which doesn't have any useful information. Thanks.
You use this promoted property to set the 'Outbound Map' of a Dynamic send port.
You need to supply a fully qualified type name (the string containing 'type,assembly,Version,Culture,PublicKeyToken') of the BizTalk map to be applied to the outgoing message at the end of send port processing.
I'm working on an ASP.NET MVC3 application and I annotated my model with an attribute that specifies what roles can change specific fields for any possible status the model is in. Take this as an example:
public class Model
{
[RoleLimiter(
new[]{Role.Admin, Role.BasicUser, Role.Validator}, // for draft
new[]{Role.Admin, Role.BasicUser, Role.Validator}, // for awaiting validation
new[]{Role.Admin})] // for published etc
public string Subject {get;set;}
}
It looks a bit messy, sure, but it's very easy to change if needed. Now once I have this, it's easy to check for each field the current status and then get the list of roles that can change it. If the current role isn't in it, I'll add a disabled class to the control.
What I wanted to do next is to make a HtmlHelper extension that has the same syntax as the normal EditorFor (or even a straight-forward TextBoxFor), but does this extra check and automatically adds the attribute behind the scenes, but I'm stuck on getting the field info from the expression, ie:
How do you get from
HtmlHelper.TextBoxWithRoleLimitationsFor(x=>x.Subject);
to the attribute attached to x.Subject?
You fetch the LambdaExpression.Body and check whether it's a MemberExpression. You can then get the Member of the MemberExpression and get the custom attributes from that.
I have a classic 3-tier ASP.Net 3.5 web application with forms that display business objects and allow them to be edited. Controls on the form correspond to a property of the underlying business object. The user will have read/write, readonly, or no access to the various controls depending on his/her role. Very conventional stuff.
My question is: what is the object-oriented best practice for coding this? Is there anything more elegant than wrapping each control in a test for the user's role and setting its Visible and Enabled properties?
Thanks
You'll want to drive this off of data, trust me. You'll need a lot of tables to do it right, but it is so worth it in the end. Having to crack open code and edit a bunch of if-statements every time the business wants to change permissions is a killer.
You'll want a table for your main high-level types, things you probably already have business object clases for. Then a table for each status of them. Then a table for the fields of these classes. Then a table for user roles (admin, guest, etc.) Finally a table for the permissions themselves. This table will have columns for business class, status, field, user role, and then what permission they have. For permissions I would go with one field and use an enum: Hidden, ReadOnly, Editable, and Required. Required implies Editable. Anything but Hidden implies Visible. Finally put a Priority column on this table to control which permission is used when more than one might apply.
You fill out this table with various combinations of class, status, field, role, and permission. If a value is null then it applies to all possible values. So you don't need a trillion rows to cover all your bases. For example, 99% of the time, Guest users are read-only users. So you can put a single entry in the table with only the Guest role specified, everything else is null, and set it's Priority nice and high, and set the permission to Read Only. Now for all classes, all statuses, all fields, if the user is a Guest, they will have Read Only permission.
I added status to your list of concerns because in my experience, business all the time wants to constrain things by an object's status. So maybe users can edit an item's name while it is in Draft status, for example, but once it is in Posted status, the name is no longer editable. That is really common in my experience.
You'd want to bring this table into memory and store it in the app's cache, because it's not going to change very often, if ever, unless you do a whole new version.
Now the above is going to handle 90% of your needs, I suspect.
One area that will have to be handled in code, unless you want to get really fancy, is the cases where a user's permission is determined in part by the value of fields in the object itself. So say you have a Project class, which has a Project Manager class. Now the Percent Complete field of the class is basically read-only for everybody, except the Project Manager. How are you going to handle that? You'll need to provide a way to incorporate specific instances of a class into the decision making process. I do this in code.
To work properly, I have found that access levels should be in this increasing order:
NONE, VIEW, REQUIRED, EDIT.
Note that REQUIRED is NOT the top level as you may think it would be since EDIT (both populate & de-populate permission) is a greater privilege than REQUIRED (populate-only permission).
The enum would look like this:
/** NO permissions.
* Presentation: "hidden"
* Database: "no access"
*/
NONE(0),
/** VIEW permissions.
* Presentation: "read-only"
* Database: "read access"
*/
VIEW(1),
/** VIEW and POPULATE permissions.
* Presentation: "required/highlighted"
* Database: "non-null"
*/
REQUIRED(2),
/** VIEW, POPULATE, and DEPOPULATE permissions.
* Presentation: "editable"
* Database: "nullable"
*/
EDIT(3);
From the bottom layer (database constraints), create a map of fields-to-access. This map then gets updated (further restrained) at the next layer up (business rules + user permissions). Finally, the top layer (presentation rules) can then further restrain the map again if desired.
Important: The map must be wrapped so that it only allows access to be decreased with any subsequent update. Updates which attempt to increase access should just be ignored without triggering any error. This is because it should act like a voting system on what the access should look like. In essence, the subsequent layering of access levels as mentioned above can happen in any order since it will result in an access-level low-water-mark for each field once all layers have voted.
Ramifications:
1) The presentation layer CAN hide a field (set access to NONE) for a database-specified read-only (VIEW) field.
2) The presentation layer CANNOT display a field when the business rules say that the user does not have at least VIEW access.
3) The presentation layer CANNOT move a field's access up to "editable" (nullable) if the database says it's only "required" (non-nullable).
Note: The presentation layer should be made (custom display tags) to render the fields by reading the access map without the need for any "if" statements.
The same access map that is used for setting up the display can also be using during the submit validations. A generic validator can be written to read any form and its access map to ensure that all the rules have been followed.
I have often found that this is really the only real easy and understandable way to do it, as your interface needs to modify based on the information and level of editing that they can complete.
I do find typically though that depending on the needs, you can interject the "cannot edit" information by passing role information to the business level if you have plans to move to different presentation levels. but this adds complexity, and if you are only building for one interface it would most likely be overkill
For the website menus we can have different menus based on users role by using the Sitemaps. For controls like Buttons we will have to hide them using their Visible property. I think a good idea will be to create a server control (Button) and expose the Role property. This will hide the Button if the user is not in the correct role.
My first instinct for doing this in a more OO way would be to handle your roles and their implementations for this purpose (control permissions read/write/etc) is to use the abstract factory pattern for your roles. I will be happy to explain the ins and outs of what I am talking about if you'd like but there are probably 900 examples on the web. Here is one link (disclaimer: it's my blog but it does happen to talk to using abstract factory for roles specifically)
Using something like this you could then use a number of methods to display the correct controls for each of your business object properties with the correct attributes (read/write/hidden/displayed/etc).