I am creating some hack kind of thing in existing android code to verify database creation and its accessibility across layers in application.
For this I have modified an existing function of .java file but I am facing an issue while calling constructor of SQLiteOpenHelper.
The signature is SQLiteOpenHelper(Context context, String name, SQLiteDatabase.CursorFactory factory, int version)
And I don't know how to create this Context instance. From googling I am seeing it is being some kind of activity class instance.
What ways are there to create this Context instance? Do we have to have activity class implemented?
Have a look at this question. It shows how to obtain a reference to the current Context object statically.
The gist of it is that you have to store a reference to the context that can be accessed statically from other sections of code.
P.S. You can't really "create" a context. That is something that is provided to you by the Android platform.
Just call:
this.getApplicationContext()
from wherever you are trying to create the instance of SQLiteOpenHelper.
Related
I am new to the usage of reflection in Java/scala. It is not quite clear to me why we need to instantiate a type at runtime. An example would be the best. Thanks a lot.
I will give you a general example of where runtime type instantiation or in general inspection of a types is useful. Think of the Plugin Pattern. Assume you want to create an application that allows users to create plugins. You don't have the plugins the users are going to make in the future, at hand. How are you able to use their plugins after you have released your application? You need to be able to inspect their plugins for a method your application requires and then call said method.
In order to enable this, language designers create a platform in which you are able to query a module (jar in java, assemblies in .net) for the types it defines and the methods, fields, etc it contains. You can then call any method, instantiate any type you want and basically interact with the module as if you had the module at compile time and you were referencing it(well not exactly but you get the point).
Here's and example of a method call that happens at runtime. You can assume that we have already created foo from a string we get from a configuration file at runtime. foo was specified as the name of the jar file containing the plugin types. I don't want to provide the instantiation code as it would make this too bloated, but here is the method:
Method method = foo.getClass().getMethod("doSomething", null);
method.invoke(foo, null);
As you see, we basically got the type of the class foo, we queried it for a method using the method's name and then called it. By doing so we extended the functionality of our program with the plugin at runtime.
I'm struggling with a problem when using DependencyResolver.GetService() inside a method called from UserManager.CreateAsync() in AspNet.Identity.
I've added a UserProfile class to the AspNetUser according to
this article.
All works fine but when creating a new user it tries to create my UserProfile entity as well and inside this I have an attribute [CheckIfExists] checks if the UserProfile already exists. In this method, let's call it CheckIfExists(), I use DependencyResolver.GetService() to resolve my interface ICheckIfExists to the "concreate" class CheckIfExists. This fails since the current thread is not part of the HttpContext (since it's running in CreateAsync():s thread).
Has anyone encountered this problem? Is there a solution for it? I'm using StructureMap for IoC.
At a high level, how do these dep. injection frameworks work?
I can understand if you always instantiate an object via a custom factory like:
IUser user = DepInjector.Get<User>();
I'm guessing what happens is, wherever you defined the mappings, it will look at the type you want and try and find a match, if found, it will via reflection instantiate the type.
Are there dep. inj. frameworks that would work like:
IUser user = new User();
If so, how would it get the correct user, where is it hooking into the CLR to do this? In case of an asp.net website, is it any different?
If you want to know how Ninject works then the obvious place to start would be reading How Injection Works on their official wiki. It does use reflection but it now also uses dynamic methods:
"By default, the StandardKernel will
create dynamic methods (via
System.Reflection.Emit.DynamicMethod)
that can be used to inject values into
the different injection targets. These
dynamic methods are then triggered via
delegate calls."
As for you second example, I don't believe there are any DI frameworks that would do what you ask. However, constructor injection tends to be most common way of implementing IoC, so that when a class is constructed it knows what type to bind to via some configuration binding. So in your example IUser would be mapped to concrete User in config bindings so that any consuming class that has an IUser parameter as part of its constructor would get the correct User type passed in.
AFAIK there's no way to "hook into" object instantiation with the CLR. The only way to use DI in the second case would be to employ an assembly rewriter (i.e. a postprocessor similar to PostSharp) to replace the call to new with a call to the DI factory method (i.e. GetUser) in the compiled code.
I am creating a custom route by subclassing RouteBase. I have a dependency in there that I'd like to wire up with IoC. The method GetRouteData just takes HttpContext, but I want to add in my unit of work as well....somehow.
I am using StructureMap, but info on how you would do this with any IoC framework would be helpful.
Well, here is our solution. Many little details may be omitted but overall idea is here. This answer may be a kind of offtop to original question but it describes the general solution to the problem.
I'll try to explain the part that is responsible for plain custom HTML-pages that are created by users at runtime and therefore can't have their own Controller/Action. So the routes should be either somehow built at runtime or be "catch-all" with custom IRouteConstraint.
First of all, lets state some facts and requirements.
We have some data and some metadata about our pages stored in DB;
We don't want to generate a (hypothetically) whole million of routes for all of existing pages beforehand (i.e. on Application startup) because something can change during application and we don't want to tackle with pushing the changes to global RouteCollection;
So we do it this way:
1. PageController
Yes, special controller that is responsible for all our content pages. And there is the only action that is Display(int id) (actually we have a special ViewModel as param but I used an int id for simplicity.
The page with all its data is resolved by ID inside that Display() method. The method itself returns either ViewResult (strongly typed after PageViewModel) or NotFoundResult in case when page is not found.
2. Custom IRouteConstraint
We have to somewhere define if the URL user actually requested refers to one of our custom pages. For this we have a special IsPageConstraint that implements IRouteConstraint interface. In the Match() method of our constraint we just call our PageRepository to check whether there is a page that match our requested URL. We have our PageRepository injected by StructureMap. If we find the page then we add that "id" parameter (with the value) to the RouteData dictionary and it is automatically bound to PageController.Display(int id) by DefaultModelBinder.
But we need a RouteData parameter to check. Where we get that? Here comes...
3. Route mapping with "catch-all" parameter
Important note: this route is defined in the very end of route mappings list because it is very general, not specific. We check all our explicitly defined routes first and then check for a Page (that is easily changeable if needed).
We simply map our route like this:
routes.MapRoute("ContentPages",
"{*pagePath}",
new { controller = "Page", action = "Display" }
new { pagePath = new DependencyRouteConstraint<IsPageConstraint>() });
Stop! What is that DependencyRouteConstraint thing appeared in mapping? Well, thats what does the trick.
4. DependencyRouteConstraint<TConstraint> class
This is just another generic implementation of IRouteConstraint which takes the "real" IRouteConstraint (IsPageConstraint) and resolves it (the given TConstraint) only when Match() method called. It uses dependency injection so our IsPageConstraint instance has all actual dependencies injected!
Our DependencyRouteConstraint then just calls the dependentConstraint.Match() providing all the parameters thus just delegating actual "matching" to the "real" IRouteConstraint.
Note: this class actually has the dependency on ServiceLocator.
Summary
That way we have:
Our Route clear and clean;
The only class that has a dependency on Service Locator is DependencyRouteConstraint;
Any custom IRouteConstraint uses dependency injection whenever needed;
???
PROFIT!
Hope this helps.
So, the problem is:
Route must be defined beforehand, during Application startup
Route's responsibility is to map the incoming URL pattern to the right Controller/Action to perform some task on request. And visa versa - to generate links using that mapping data. Period. Everything else is "Single Responsibility Principle" violation which actually led to your problem.
But UoW dependencies (like NHibernate ISession, or EF ObjectContext) must be resolved at runtime.
And that is why I don't see the children of RouteBase class as a good place for some DB work dependency. It makes everything closely coupled and non-scalable. It is actually impossible to perform Dependency Injection.
From now (I guess there is some kind of already working system) you actually have just one more or less viable option that is:
To use Service Locator pattern: resolve your UoW instance right inside the GetRouteData method (use CommonServiceLocator backed by StructureMap IContainer). That is simple but not really nice thing because this way you get the dependency on static Service Locator itself in your Route.
With CSL you have to just call inside GetRouteData:
var uow = ServiceLocator.Current.GetService<IUnitOfWork>();
or with just StructureMap (without CSL facade):
var uow = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<IUnitOfWork>();
and you're done. Quick and dirty. And the keyword is "dirty" actually :)
Sure, there is much more flexible solution but it needs a few architectural changes. If you provide more details on exactly what data you get in your routes I can try to explain how we solved our Pages routing problem (using DI and custom IRouteConstraint).
I am new to the MVC way of programming so please bear with my basic question !
I have a Status class with a default constructor (in an ASP.NET MVC application).
public Status()
{
this.DatePosted = DateTime.Now;
}
I noticed Fluent NHibernate calls this constructor each time it fetched a list of existing Status objects from the database. Hence, the constructor does not seem like the right place to initialize the date.
Where should I move this initialization ? Moving it to the Controller (Add action of Status controller) also seems to violate the principle that the Controller should not make any business decisions. Should I move it to the Status DAO then ? (In traditional ASP.NET Web Form applications I worked with, a DAO simply accepted a business object and saved it to the database and did not contain any logic)
I would like to know the right way to accomplish this. Is there another layer I am missing here where this initialization should take place?
I noticed Fluent NHibernate calls this
constructor each time it fetched a
list of existing Status objects from
the database. This does not seem right
This is exactly what is supposed to be happening. Why wouldn't an ORM call the default constructor for an object? I think every hand rolled DAL and ORM in the world would trigger DatePosted to be reset because thats just how constructors work.
Your DatePosted property should probably set via ModelBinding or manually in the controller and not be part of a constructor.