ESharp Validation Rule Breakthrough

After a late night of hacking I have finally got an end to end transformation of E# validation rules into CSLA code that compiles. I am using the NVelocity code generator I created to do this, here is the example entity I have defined:

using NBusiness.Frameworks.Csla.Templates;

using Csla.Validation.CommonRules;

 

family Test

{

      entity A as EditableRoot

      {

            field auto id int aid;

            field nullable string data;

            field nullable double value;

           

            validate data StringMaxLength { MaxLength : 10 };

      }

}

 

After running this through the compiler here is the code that it generated:

using System;

using Csla;

using Csla.Validation;

using System.Collections.Generic;

 

namespace Test

{

      [Serializable]

      public partial class A : BusinessBase<A>

      {

            #region Properties

            private static PropertyInfo<int> aidProperty = RegisterProperty<int>(

                  typeof(A),

                  new PropertyInfo<int>(“aid”));

            /// <summary>

            /// aid property

            /// </summary>

            public int aid

            {

                  get { return GetProperty<int>(aidProperty); }

            }

            private static PropertyInfo<string> dataProperty = RegisterProperty<string>(

                  typeof(A),

                  new PropertyInfo<string>(“data”));

            /// <summary>

            /// data property

            /// </summary>

            public string data

            {

                  get { return GetProperty<string>(dataProperty); }

                  set { SetProperty<string>(dataProperty, value); }

            }

            private static PropertyInfo<System.Nullable<double>> valueProperty = RegisterProperty<System.Nullable<double>>(

                  typeof(A),

                  new PropertyInfo<System.Nullable<double>>(“value”));

            /// <summary>

            /// value property

            /// </summary>

            public System.Nullable<double> value

            {

                  get { return GetProperty<System.Nullable<double>>(valueProperty); }

                  set { SetProperty<System.Nullable<double>>(valueProperty, value); }

            }

            #endregion

 

            #region Relationships

            #endregion

           

            #region Validation

            protected override void AddBusinessRules()

            {

                  Dictionary<string, object> dataArgs = new Dictionary<string, object>();

                  dataArgs.Add(“MaxLength”, 10);

                  ValidationRules.AddRule(

                        Csla.Validation.CommonRules.StringMaxLength,

                        new DecoratedRuleArgs(dataProperty, dataArgs));

            }

            #endregion

      }

}

(You can see the power of a DSL simply by looking at how many more lines of code it takes to represent the same thing in a lower level language!)

It has taken me a loooong time to get to this point and I think it’s all downhill from here. Trying to find out how to discover validation / access / authorization rules from arbitrary business object frameworks turns out to be a terribly difficult thing to do. There is lots of room for improvement but I think I have the basics down for now. This should allow me to generate code for CSLA and NBusiness frameworks at least and perhaps a couple of others without too much work.

Next up is largely a process of cleaning up code (I have been hacking on things a lot recently), fixing up unit tests and fleshing out CSLA templates for each major stereotype (I love that word in a software context!). What a relief!

Author: justinmchase

I'm a Software Developer from Minnesota.

%d bloggers like this: