Modifying a Biztalk message from custom code - biztalk

Disclaimer: I am a complete biztalk newbie.
I need to be able to read and potentially edit 4 nodes in a biztalk message; preferably this needs to be done from a c# helper class as I am making a service call and also have unit tests written for this.
I already have this class wired up and it works with the XLANGMessage class, the problem I am running into is at this point in the orchestration the message is a Schema based type and doesn't seem to have any way for me to modify it.
I've done some reading and found a few ideas but have not been able to confirm if any of these can work from custom code.

1 write a map to transform the incoming message to the desired type
or
2 write something like this in your helper component to transform the message
public XmlDocument TransformMessage(XLANGMessage message)
Then pass the result document to a biztalk message in a message assignment shape.
responseMessage = xmlDocument;
You may get better performance if you pass streams instead of messages around.

You can pass messages into and out of C# helper classes easily. The simplest way is just to treat input parameters and return values as of type System.Xml.XmlDocument. The XLANG/s engine will safely cast back and forth from the XLANGMessage type to XmlDocument.
As you are essentially creating a "new" instance of the message (messages are immutable in BizTalk), the call to your helper class needs to be performed in a Message Assignment shape, with the outer Construct shape constructing the copy of your original message.
public static XmlDocument UpdateMyMessage(XmlDocument sourceMessage)
{
/* Do stuff to your Message here */
return sourceMessage;
}
A best-practice to consider is to declare all your C# helper methods as Static. This will avoid any issues with de/serialisation of your helper class during dehydration.

Are BizTalk messages immutable?
Generally speaking they are however, by creating a “corrective” orchestration and using a pass by reference option on the incoming message parameter, an existing message can be modified.

Related

ErrorBinding Spring portlet MVC

Disclaimer: I wished I had a through understanding before starting working with the framework.
But as it is of now, I'm lacking on that front, and hence the question.
I am working with Spring-Portlet MVC.
I have a flow, where in I take an input on a screen, validate the input, depending upon its result it either render same screen or next screen.
Implementation detail:
I have an action method which takes form backed command object. It checks whether entered input is valid or not. If it is not valid, it populate error message in BindingResult instance it takes as another argument.
We have different render method, to render different screen.
I'm taking command object as an argument in these render method. This command object I'm receiving is same as one passed to action.
Problem:
While rerendering a screen spring-mvc should bind the error message populated in action method. Currently when I take command object as argument in render method spring-mvc is somehow unable to bind that error message. But interesting enough it is able to bind the error message if I don't take command object as argument in render method and rather create a new command object altogether there.
can,some one having better understanding of spring-portlet mvc please explain this behaviour, or tell where I am lacking in understanding.
Regards,
Mawia
EDIT: Just to enrich the below answer: Though I didn't exactly isolated the issue which was causing the said behaviour, but the way I met my requirement was using modelattribute. ModelAttribute can be used either on method or a parameter to a method. It ensures that model will made available to all the call till the view is render(that is my understanding!). So we don't need to take command object as parameter in Render method, just annotate the commandObject parameter in action method with ModelAttribute and then you can get the same object returned from model as suggested in the answer below.
I don't think the command/model object should be an argument/parameter in the render method. I have had the same issue trying to get the validation error messages when command/model is defined as argument in render method signature. I typically have the command/object creation/populate in a separate method, like this:
#ModelAttribute(value="address")
public Address getAddress(#RequestParam Integer id){
Address address = null;
if(id != null){
address = myService.getAddress(id);
}else{
address = new Address();
}
return address;
}
If I still need to access the ModelAttribute/command object from the render method, I typically get it by:
#RenderMapping
public String showAddressPage(ModelMap modelMap){
Address address = modelMap.get("address");
//make any additional changes to address
}
I used this example as reference article

JSON + SOAP - Is DataContract necessary?

Here's my problem.
I'm using SOAP to retrieve information from a third-party web service.
Response time is too high, so I was planning on using JSON instead, at least in a couple of methods.
For this I'm using DataContractJsonSerializer, but I seem to be having some trouble.
For example, in SOAP there's a method called getAvailablePublic with returns an object of type getAvailablePublicResponse.
There's an equivalent for this method in JSON, which also returns a an object of type getAvailablePublicResponse.
In order to deserialize the information I needed to create a couple of data contracts, and here are my concerns:
Do I really need to create a DataContract? Why can't I use getAvailablePublicResponse object from asmx?
The problem is that if I create a DataContract, I need to use a different name other than getAvailablePublicResponse, as I would have two objects with the same name (the one created by me, and the one from SOAP), and this would require making several changes in my solution.
Hope this makes sense.
Thanks.
Can you post your client code that is making the call to the web service? I don't know what you are using now, but I'm a fan of RestSharp for making remote calls and serializing JSON to C# classes. Something like this:
RestClient client = new RestClient("http://some.domain.com/someservice?someparam=yes");
var results = client.Execute<MyGreatDTOClass>(new RestRequest(Method.GET));

ASP.NET ScriptService prevent return of null properties in JSON

Basically I want to make my script service only serialise properties that are not null on an array of object I am returning... So this..
{"k":"9wjH38dKw823","s":10,"f":null,"l":null,"j":null,"p":null,"z":null,"i":null,"c":null,"m":0,"t":-1,"u":2}
would be
{"k":"9wjH38dKw823","s":10,"m":0,"t":-1,"u":2}
Does anyone know if this is possible?
Basically the reason for this is because null values are for unchanged properties. A local copy is kept in the javascript that is just updated to reduce traffic to the server. Change values are then merged.
You can create a custom JavaScriptConverter class for the JSON serialization process to use to handle your object, and then put the necessary logic in the Serialize method of that class to exclude the properties that are null.
This article has a clear step-by-step discussion of the process involved in creating it.
You probably would not need to actually implement the Deserialize method (can throw a NotImplementedException) if you are not passing that type of object in as an input parameter to your web services.

NHibernate.IFutureValue<> when serialized includes .Value

I'm building an ASP.NET (2.0, no, I can't change it) site with NHibernate, and have a custom JSON converter so I can not-serialize properties I want hidden from the client. This lets me just return the objects, and never have to worry about their serialized values - they're always secure.
Unfortunately, it appears that if I use query.FutureValue<class>(), the object that gets serialized is first the NHibernate.Impl.FutureValue<class> and not my entity, which means I get JSON that looks like this if I throw it in a dictionary and return it to the client:
{key: { Value: { /* my serialized object properties */ } }
Previously I discovered that I can't get any interfaces to work in ASP's JavaScriptConverter implementations... only regular or abstract classes. So returning typeof(IFutureValue<MyBaseClass>) as a supported type means my converter is completely ignored. I can catch MyBaseClass, because I refactored things earlier to use an abstract base instead of an interface, but not the interface.
And then I discover that the FutureValue implementation in .Impl is internal to the assembly, or some other such nonsense that only serves to make my .NET experience even more painful. So I can't use typeof(FutureValue<MyBaseClass>) to handle it all, because FutureValue exists only in my debugging sessions.
Is there a way to get the class type out of the assembly? Or a way to convince ASP that interfaces do in fact have uses? Or might there be some superclass I can access that would let me get around the whole issue?
Help! I like my Futures, it lets me batch a whole heck-ton of calls at once!
(if something isn't clear, or you want more code, by all means, ask! I can post quite a bit.)
If I'm understanding you correctly, it seems you are mixing things a together a little bit.
It sounds like you're trying to serialize an instance of query.FutureValue<class>(), which unsurprisingly gives you just that: a JSON object where the Value fields has JSON representing your entity.
To me it sounds like you really want to just serialize query.FutureValue<class>().Value.
Using NHibernate futures like this gives you little benefit though, so you're probably after something like:
var future1 = query1.FutureValue<SomeEntity>();
var future2 = query2.FutureValue<AnotherEntity>();
var json1 = serializer.Serialize(future1.Value); //<BAM! Multi-query gets fired!
var json2 = serializer.Serialize(future2.Value);
Does that make sense?

Hiding the stacktrace for an exception returned by a asp.net WebMethod?

I am using methods with the Attribute [WebMethod] in my aspx pages. I don't use any asp.net ajax but jQuery to call these methods and return objects in JSON. This all works fine.
Next I added an authorization check inside the webMethod, if the current user doesn't have access to the feature I need to let the calling JavaScript know.
So I am throwing an AccessViolationException exception which can then be parsed by the OnError callback function in JavaScript. This works too but the exception includes the full StackTrace and I don't want to make this available to the calling client.
What other ways I could use to return an "Access Denied" to the client when the WebMethod returns a business object?
I'm using ASP.Net 3.5SP1 and jQuery 1.32
You can also add a:
customErrors mode="On"/
in your web.config, this will cut away the stack trace and leave you only the exception message
Why propagate errors through the wire? why not use an error response ?
Just wrap your object in a response object wich can contain an error code for status and an error message to present to users.
As suggested by NunFur I changed my approach and rather than throwing an error, I return a 'richer' object.
There are at least two options, the first one would be to encapsulate my business object into a response object with some status properties. I tried this but it makes the JSON more complicated.
So rather than adding a new object I added two properties to my business object, something like ServiceStatus and ServiceMessage. By default these are 200 and '', but can be set by the WebMethod code if anything goes wrong (no access, proper error). In this case they business object will be 'empty' (no data). The JavaScript code then first checks for the ServiceStatus and reacts appropriately.
I add the two fields to all my objects that are returned by WebMethods, even a simple string. They have to implement an Interface with those two properties.
Now I have complete control over that goes over the wire in case something unexpected is happening.
Thanks for the input
I save exceptions for when things go really wrong. (e.g. can't connect to the database)
Either return nothing (null/nill/whatever), or return a false bool value.
Sorry that I don't have a better answer than that...I'll have to keep looking myself.
You could look at SoapException: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.services.protocols.soapexception(VS.71).aspx
I'm just not sure, if it will work when it is called from JavaScript. Espeially if it's called with a get-request.
BTW AccessViolationException is to my best knowlegde ment to be thrown when the application is accessing memory it has no access to.
/Asger

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