custom validator against remote object - apache-flex

I have a need to validate a field against our database to verify unique-ness. The problem I seem to be having is that the validators doValidation() exits before we've heard back from database.
How can I have the validator wait to return its payload until after we've heard from the DB?
Or perhaps a better question might be (since I think the first question is impossible), how can I set this up differently, so that I don't need to wait, or so that the wait doesn't cause the validation to automaticallly return valid?

If you're using a remote object, you can specify the method call inside your remote declaration and assign a function to the result call. The result call only runs once the remote server returns something, so it won't be run before your validation.
Do your validation call in said result function call (which you will have to create) and you should be good. Your code should go something like this:
<s:RemoteObject id="employeeService"
destination="ColdFusion"
source="f4iaw100.remoteData.employeeData"
endpoint="http://adobetes.com/flex2gateway/"
result="employeeService_resultHandler(event)"/>
**<s:method name="dataCheckCall" result="dataCheckResult(event)"/>**
<s:RemoteObject />
And in your script:
function protected dataCheckResult(event:ResultEvent):void {
**doValidate();**
}
Edit: As soon as you call "dataCheckCall" the method will start running. If, for whatever reason, you want to call this WITHIN your validator, you can do so, and then dataCheckResult will run whenever it returns with it's payload (pretend doValidate is called elsewhere). I've left a message below as well.

You are trying to fit an asynchronous process (fetching data from a DB) into a synchronous process (checking all the validators in turn).
This won't work...
You'll need to either roll your own validator framework, or use a different method of determining the legality of your controls.
P.S. The MX validators are rubbish anyway!

What I've managed to do, seems to work, mostly. I don't like it, but it at least performs the validation against the remote source.
What I've done, then, is to use an 'keyUp' event handler to spin off the database lookup portion. In the meanwhile, I set up a string variable to act as some kind of a Flag, which'll be marked as 'processing'. When the response event fires, I'll examine its contents, and either clear the flag, or set it to some kind of other error.
Then, I have created a new 'EmptyStringValidator' will check the contents of this flag, and do its job accordingly.
Its indirect, but, so far, seems to work.

Related

Chaining Handlers with MediatR

We are using MediatR to implement a "Pipeline" for our dotnet core WebAPI backend, trying to follow the CQRS principle.
I can't decide if I should try to implement a IPipelineBehavior chain, or if it is better to construct a new Request and call MediatR.Send from within my Handler method (for the request).
The scenario is essentially this:
User requests an action to be executed, i.e. Delete something
We have to check if that something is being used by someone else
We have to mark that something as deleted in the database
We have to actually delete the files from the file system.
Option 1 is what we have now: A DeleteRequest which is handled by one class, wherein the Handler checks if it is being used, marks it as deleted, and then sends a new TaskStartRequest with the parameters to Delete.
Option 2 is what I'm considering: A DeleteRequest which implements the marker interfaces IRequireCheck, IStartTask, with a pipeline which runs:
IPipelineBehavior<IRequireCheck> first to check if the something is being used,
IPipelineBehavior<DeleteRequest> to mark the something as deleted in database and
IPipelineBehavior<IStartTask> to start the Task.
I haven't fully figured out what Option 2 would look like, but this is the general idea.
I guess I'm mainly wondering if it is code smell to call MediatR.Send(TRequest2) within a Handler for a TRequest1.
If those are the options you're set on going with - I say Option 2. Sending requests from inside existing Mediatr handlers can be seen as a code smell. You're hiding side effects and breaking the Single Responsibility Principle. You're also coupling your requests together and you should try to avoid situations where you can't send one type of request before another.
However, I think there might be an alternative. If a delete request can't happen without the validation and marking beforehand you may be able to leverage a preprocessor (example here) for your TaskStartRequest. That way you can have a single request that does everything you need. This even mirrors your pipeline example by simply leveraging the existing Mediatr patterns.
Is there any need to break the tasks into multiple Handlers? Maybe I am missing the point in mediatr. Wouldn't this suffice?
public async Task<Result<IFailure,ISuccess>> Handle(DeleteRequest request)
{
var thing = await this.repo.GetById(request.Id);
if (thing.IsBeignUsed())
{
return Failure.BeignUsed();
}
var deleted = await this.repo.Delete(request.Id);
return deleted ? new Success(request.Id) : Failure.DbError();
}

Signalr - Serialize callback as event not a function call?

In Signalr, is there any support for having events instead of callbacks.
Let me explain before you grab your pitchforks.
In following with the first example here
Clients.All.addContosoChatMessageToPage(name, message);
Wouldn't call a hub proxy's addContosoChatMessageToPage(name, message), but would dispatch a addContosoChatMessageToPage event with some extra information. (not asking that it be the same api call exactly)
The reason I'm asking all of this is because
This works much better alongside functional reactive programming frameworks like ELM and bacon.js
I don't want to do this myself and essentially create my own sub-framework. Of course I could always do Clients.All.CreateEvent(name,params...) where I'm continually calling back my method to do this event creation
I actually think events work better in some scenarios for separation of concerns.
Am I crazy? does something like this exist?
This is already supported. If you don't want to do the dispatching yourself and you know the name of the "event" or "method" at runtime you can do this:
IClientProxy proxy = Clients.All;
proxy.Invoke(name, args);
This lets you write code where you may not know the name of the event you're trying to callback on the client at compile time.

Asynchronous validation in QWizard

I'm writing a wizard UI based on the QWizard Qt object. There's one particular situation where I want the user to log in to a service using host, username, and password. The rest of the wizard then manipulates this service to do various setup tasks. The login may take a while, especially in error cases where the DNS name takes a long time to resolve -- or perhaps it may not even resolve at all.
So my idea is to make all three fields mandatory using the registerField mechanism, and when the user hits Next, we show a little throbber on the wizard page saying "Connecting to server, please wait..." while we try to connect in the background. If the connection succeeds, we advance to the next page. If not, we highlight the offending field and ask the user to try again.
However, I'm at a loss for how to accomplish this. The options I've thought of:
1) Override validatePage and have it start a thread in the background. Enter a wait inside validatePage() that pumps the Qt event loop until the thread finishes. You'd think this was the ugliest solution, but...
2) Hide the real Next button and add a custom Next button that, when clicked, dispatches my long running function in a thread and waits for a 'validation complete' signal to be raised by something. When that happens, we manually call QWizard::next() (and we completely bypass the real validation logic from validatePage and friends.) This is even uglier, but moves the ugliness to a different level that may make development easier.
Surely there's a better way?
It's not as visually appealing, but you could add a connecting page, and move to that page. If the connection succeeds, call next() on the wizard, and if the connection fails, call previous() and highlight the appropriate fields. It has the advantage of being relatively straightforward to code.
My final choice was #2 (override the Next button, simulate its behavior, but capture its click events manually and do the things I want to with it.) Writing the glue to define the Next button's behavior was minimal, and I was able to subclass QWizardPage with a number of hooks that let me run my task ON the same page, instead of having to switch to an interstitial page and worry about whether to go forwards or backwards. Thanks Caleb for your answer though.
I know this has already been answered (a long time ago!) but in case anyone else is having the same challenge. Another method for this is to create a QLineEdit, initiate it as empty and set it as a mandatory registered field. This will mean that "Next" is not enabled until it is filled with some text.
Run your connection task as normal and when it completes use setText to update the QLineEdit to "True" or "Logged in" or anything other than empty. This will then mean the built in isComplete function will be passed as this previously missing mandatory field is now complete. If you never add it to the layout then it won't be seen and the user won't be able to interact with it.
As an example ...
self.validated_field = QLineEdit("")
self.registerField('validated*', self.validated_field)
and then when your login process completes successfully
self.validated_field.setText("True")
This should do it and is very lightweight. Be sure though that you consider the scenario where a user then goes back to that page and whether you need to reset the field to blank. If that's the case then just add in the initialisePage() function to set it back to blank
self.validated_field.setText("")
Thinking about it you could also add the line edit to the display and disable it so that a user cannot update it and then give it a meaningful completion message to act as a status update...
self.validated_field = QLineEdit("")
self.validated_field.setDisabled(True)
self.validated_field.setStyleSheet("border:0;background-color:none")
self.main_layout.addWidget(self.validated_field)
self.registerField('validated*', self.validated_field)
and then when you update it..
self.validated_field.setText("Logged in")

Handle multiple requests with ICallbackEventHandler

Is there any way to make multiple requests to the callback function in asp.net when using the ICallbackEventHandler? I need the results for each result, however, when I iterate through and call the function, I get the result only for the last call. Any way to make it return a result for each call?
This is what I am passing in via javascript:
function NoPostback() {
$(".spans").each(function(index, item) {
CallServer($(item).attr("myattr"));
});
}
In this, myattr is a custom attribute that holds a value (1..10). What I want returned is something like ('you said: ' + id) to be returned for each of the calls, so that I can go ahead and place them in the appropriate holders.
However, only one item is returned which is the final call made. For instance if there are 4 items, it returns only ('you said: 4').
Any idea on how to have all of them returned?
Thanks in advance.
Most Javascript AJAX frameworks either abort any subsequent requests if one is in progress, or they ignore previous requests and only handle the latest. The AJAX request itself will pass through the browser's XmlHttpRequest object, but the rest of the javascript code is running within the pages thread. Currently, there is no concurrent programming with javascript (however this is slated to change.)

Synchronous calls using RemoteObject

Is there a way to make synchronous calls using RemoteObject in Flex?
All IO in Flex is asynchronous. The typical pattern to deal with this is to use an AsyncResponder. For instance:
var t:AsyncToken = remoteObject.methodCall();
t.addResponder(new AsyncResponder(resultEvent, faultEvent));
think twice when u want it to be synchronous.
Do u know what synchronous mean? it will FREEZE your application until it receive data. Unless u are pretty sure that your remote calling can receive return value immediately (super fast network connection).
if your function call depends on each other, i would suggest you implement a state machine. e.g.
after 1st async call, your state becomes STATE_1, and your next function call will check on this state variable, to decide next move (ignore the current call or carry on).
my 2 cents.
If you want synchronous behavior, just add a wait after you make the call.
EDIT: I've added code for the chaining behavior I was talking about. Just replace the result handler each subsequent time you call the remoteObject.
...
remoteObject.function1(...);
...
private var resultHandler1(event:ResultEvent):void
{
...
remoteObject.removeEventListener(resultHandler1);
remoteObject.addEventListener(ResultEvent.RESULT, resultHandler2);
remoteObject.function2(...);
}
private var resultHandler2(event:ResultEvent):void
{
...
}
I achieved the same in two ways: First, as said above the use of state machines. It may get tricky at times. Second, the use of command queues - I think this is the best way to do it... but the downside is that the UI may not be very reflective in this time.
you should perhaps try and make one request with with all the data u want to be recieved synchronous and then make the different classes that need data listen to the correct data for that class.
ex:
// request
remoteobject.GetData();
// on received request
private function receivedData(evt:ResultEvent):void
{
for each (var resultobject:ResultObjectVO in evt.result)
{
var eventModel:Object;
var event:DataEvents = new DataEvents(resultobject.ResultType);
event.data = eventModel;
eventdispatcher.dispatchEvent(event);
}
}
Something like this. Hopes this helps.
No, why would you wish to do that anyway.
Flex makes things asynchronous so that the user isn't forced to sit and wait while data is coming back.
It would be a very poor user expereince if each time an app requested data the user had to wait on it coming back before anything else could happen.
from comment
No you don't need synchronus behaivour. If you're making say 2 calls and call 2 comes in before call 1, but 2 relies on the data inside 1 then you're left with either don't fire off event 2 till 1 comes back (this will slow down your app - much like synchronus events) or implement a way to check that event 1 has come back in event 2's handler (there are many ways you could do this).
If you're firing off many events then why not have a wrapper class of some description that tracks your events and doesn't do anything on the responses until all events are back.
You can use the AsyncToken to keep track of individual requests, so if you are firing of loads at once then you can find out exaclty whats come back and whats not.
You all are somehow mistaken or not using flex from adobe, if you send 2 calls to the server, no matter if each has an individual resquestObject the second one will ONLY be returned after the first one finish, even if the second one takes 1 milisecond to process. Just try the fibonnaci 1/40 example.
Maybe if you call a synchronous XMLHttpRequest calling JavaScript on Flex, you can do this.

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