Json Dynamic views spring MVC - spring-mvc

I am kind of new to spring MVC
and I wanted to use JasonViews (Jackson) for dynamic JSON per request and I didn't want to change my controllers too much .. so #marty here gave me a great solution in his blog
http://martypitt.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/custom-json-views-with-spring-mvc-and-jackson/
The problem is that I need control over the HTTP status codes,so my controllers are returning types of HttpResponse{T} and not List{T} how can I customize the code in order to support parsing of types like HttpResponse{List{Book}}?
If not possible, can I control the Http status code without the HttpResponse?

I may need to see an example of your code to really understand what you are asking, but this might point you in the right direction:
Take #marty's code and try extending HttpEntityMethodProcessor with it.
http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.1.x/javadoc-api/org/springframework/web/servlet/mvc/method/annotation/HttpEntityMethodProcessor.htmlS
Then, you need to make your method signatures look like
public ResponseEntity<MyType> getMyTypeWithControlOverResponseEntity(...) {...}
You can find more info on this signature type at:
http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/htmlsingle/#mvc-ann-httpentity
Let me know if this is not the right direction you were trying to go or need more help. =)

Related

Why have a separate call to get Json?

I need to get some Json to the client side from the server and it's somewhat troublesome as almost all tutorials assume an Ajax call to a separate action to get the Json.
This led me to think that there must be some reason why it is done this way. In Asp.Net MVC we can pass a Model along with the view to get the information but we can't seem to easily pass a Json object. Instead you are supposed to make a separate call to get this information.
What if the Json info is known when the page is generated, why not generate it at the same time?
I'm sorry if I wasn't clear enough. While it's nice to hear of ways to get Json to the client, the question is actually whether there is a specific reason the Ajax call method is much more popular, like security or anything like that.
Can you put something like this into your view? (rough pseudo code, assuming using a Razor view)
< script >
var myJSON = { Field: #model.Field, Field2: #model.Field2 };
< /script >
Because you do not need both at the same time... on the first call will be to get html (the view of the data - represented by a view model), and any ajax calls will be to get the possibly updated data (json serialized view model).
No reason why you can't. You could use the javacript serializer to create a JSON string that drop on the page. You could also create an action that return the json string that you called from a script tag.
What you want if you're using KnockOut, would be the Mapping plugin that turns an ordinary JS object, like that generated above, into an observable ready for KnockOut to use. See here from info. http://knockoutjs.com/documentation/plugins-mapping.html
You can use content-negotiation by setting accept header. This is considered a best practice (and according to some RESTful).
This needs to be supported and implemented at server as well. ASP NET MVC does not make it easy to support content-negotiation and you have to implement it yourself by if-else or using ActionFilter and implementing action selector.

asp.net MVC3: Trimming all HTTP POST data

I need to do trim to all HTTP POST data submitted by users through web forms. Having done googling, apparently there is no in-built functionality in asp.net to trim all HTTP POST data.
The closest that I can get is what is described here: ASP.NET MVC: Best way to trim strings after data entry. Should I create a custom model binder?
Unfortunately it doesn't work on nested ViewModels (ViewModel with property with type of other ViewModel).
What is the best way to achieve this? I don't want to do property.Trim() on every properties in all ViewModel. Thank you.
One option is to define your own IValueProvider. I would start by inheriting from NameValueCollectionValueProvider to make a TrimmedNameValueCollectionValueProvider in which you trim the results as you pull them out. Then you would defined a TrimmedFormValueProvider that passes in controllerContext.HttpContext.Request.Form as the collection.

Looking for a good technique for storing email templates

I am building a site in which we are making moderate use of email templates. As in, HTML templates which we pass tokens into like {UserName}, {Email}, {NameFirst}, etc.
I am struggling with where to store these, as far as best practice goes. I'll first show the approach I took, and I'd be really excited to hear some expert perspective as a far as alternate approaches.
I created HTML templates in a folder called /Templates/.
I call a static method in my service layer, which takes in the following arguments:
UserName
UserID
Email
TemplatePath ("~/Templates")
Email Subject
Within the service layer I have my static method SendUserEmail() which makes use of a Template class - which takes a path, loads it as a string, and has a AddToken() Method.
Within my static SendUserEmail(), I build the token list off of the method signature, and send the email.
This makes for a quite long method call in my actual usage, especially since I am calling from the web.config the "TemplatePath", and "Email Subject". I could create a utility that has a shorter method call than the ConfigurationManager.AppSettings, but my concern is more that I don't usually see method signatures this long and I feel like it's because I'm doing something wrong.
This technique works great for the emails I have now, which at the most are using the first 3 tokens. However in the future I will have more tokens to pass in, and I'm just wondering what approach to take.
Do I create methods specific to the email needing to be sent? ie. SendNewUserRegistration(), SendMarketingMaterial(), and each has a different signature for the parameters?
I am using ASP.NET Membership, which contains probably the extend of all the fields I'll ever need. There are three main objects, aspnet_User, aspnet_Mebership and aspnet_profile. If it was all contained in one object, I would have just passed that in. Is there performance concerns with passing in all 3, to get all the fields I need? That is versus just passing in aspnet_User.UserID, aspnet_User.Email, etc?
I could see passing in a dictionary with the token entries, but I'm just wondering if that is too much to ask the calling page?
Is there a way to stick these in a config file of it's own called Templates.config, which has tags like -
<Templates>
<EmailTemplate Name="New User Registration">
<Tokens>
<UserName>
<UserID>
<Email>
</Tokens>
<Message Subject="Hi welcome...">
Hi {UserName}...
</Message>
</EmailTemplate>
</Templates>
I guess the main reason I'm asking, is because I'm having a hard time determining where the responsibility should be as far as determining what template to use, and how to pass in parameters. Is it OK if the calling page has to build the dictionary of TokenName, TokenValue? Or should the method take each in as a defined parameter? This looks out of place in the web.config, because I have 2 entries for and , and it feels like it should look more nested.
Thank you. Any techniques or suggestions of an objective approach I can use to ask whether my approach is OK.
First of all I would like to suggest you to use NVelocity as a template engine. As for main problem I think you can create an abstract class MailMessage and derive each one for every needed message (with unique template). So you will use this like following:
MailMessage message = new UserRegistrationMessage(tokens);
//some code that sends this message
Going this way you force each concrete XXXMessage class to be responsible for storing a template and filling it with the given tokens. How to deal with tokens? The simpliest way is to create a dictionary before passing it to the message, so each concrete message class will know how to deal with passed dictionary and what tokens it should contain, but you also need to remember what tokens it should contain. Another way (I like it more) is to create a general abstract type TokenSet and a derived one for every needed unique set of tokens. For example you can create a UserMessageTokenSet : TokenSet and several properties in it:
UserNameToken
SomeUserProfileDataToken
etc. So using this way you will always know, what data you should set for each token set and
UserRegistrationMessage will know what to take from this tokenSet.
There are a lot of ways to go. If you will describe you task better I think I will try suggest you something more concrete. But general idea is listed above. Hope it helps =)

ASP.NET MVC - How To Refresh View From Actionmethod as a response to request?

I have an action-method in a controller that takes requests coming from a variety of different views.
It is somewhat of a utility method and I simply want it to accept the parameters it is given - do something - and then refresh the view that sent the request.
Right now, the only way I see to do this is by having the method figure out what view sent it the info and do a:
return RedirectToAction("method", "controller");
For each possibility (or something similar to that).
Is there a more general way I can make my method just re-render the current view without having to explicitly identify it?
-Thanks
Your best bet is to use jQuery to post the data then utilize the results as you see fit. Otherwise you can pass in the action/controller name in the post and use them dynamically to redirect.

ASP.NET MVC View information stored in a data-store

I'm looking for some advice on storing views in a data-store (database, file, other) and display them based on routing data, all using ASP.NET MVC 2 and ASP.NET Routing.
For example, I'd like to be able to display different views based on the following route data:
/{country}/
/{country}/{area}
But in the same vein I'd like to display:
/{planet}/
/{planet}/{satellite}
All are based on strings, and the data isn't fixed. So based on the number of segments maybe, use that as the selection criteria into the data-store...additionally, I may not know the segments up front, so they'd all be dynamic.
I'm was hoping we could get a few different methods together here, as kind of a reference for all - I'm sure some methods won't suite everyone...
So, how would you do it?
Branislav Abadjimarinov suggested a Controller Factory which could be used to do the look-up and display the page dynamically. I like this idea, what do you think?
There is no way for MVC to understand from this url's which route to choose. You have to make the routes more specific. For example:
/planet/{planet}/{satelite}
/country/{country}/{area}
You also have the option to define your own controller factory. The controller factory decides which controller to instantiate based on the route. So you can put some custom logic in it like - check if the {planet} parameter exist and if yes instantiate Planet controller else instantiate Countries controller.
This Post could be really helpful for you.
Remember you always can add a new routing rule : )
Just like this

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