In my last post I created a very simple WCF service with
the user registration functionality. I created an entity for
the user data and a DataContext class which provides some methods for operating
the entities such as add, delete, etc. And in
the service method I utilized it to add a new entity into
the table service. But I didn’t have any validation before registering which is not acceptable in a real project. So in this post I would firstly add some validation before perform
the data creation code and show how to use
the LINQ for
the table service. LINQ to Table Service Since
the table service utilizes ADO.NET Data Service to expose
the data and
the managed library of ADO.NET Data Service supports LINQ we can use it to deal with
the data of
the table service. Let me explain with my current example: I would like to ensure that when register a new user
the email address should be unique. So I need to check
the account entities in
the table service before add. If you remembered, in my last post I mentioned that there’s a method in
the TableServiceContext class – CreateQuery, which will create a IQueryable instance from a given type of entity. So here I would create a method under my AccountDataContext class to return
the IQueryable<Account> which named Load. 1: public class AccountDataContext : TableServiceContext
2: {
3: private CloudStorageAccount _storageAccount;
4:
5: public AccountDataContext(CloudStorageAccount storageAccount)
6: : base(storageAccount.TableEndpoint.AbsoluteUri, storageAccount.Credentials)
7: {
8: _storageAccount = storageAccount;
9:
10: var tableStorage = new CloudTableClient(_storageAccount.TableEndpoint.AbsoluteUri,
11: _storageAccount.Credentials);
12: tableStorage.CreateTableIfNotExist("Account");
13: }
14:
15: public void Add(Account accountToAdd)
16: {
17: AddObject("Account", accountToAdd);
18: SaveChanges();
19: }
20:
21: public IQueryable<Account> Load()
22: {
23: return CreateQuery<Account>("Account");
24: }
25: }
The method returns
the IQueryable<Account> so that I can perform
the LINQ operation on it. And back to my service class, I will use it to implement my validation.
1: public bool Register(string email, string password)
2: {
3: var storageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.FromConfigurationSetting("DataConnectionString");
4: var accountToAdd = new Account(email, password) { DateCreated = DateTime.Now };
5: var accountContext = new AccountDataContext(storageAccount);
6:
7: // validation
8: var accountNumber = accountContext.Load()
9: .Where(a => a.Email == accountToAdd.Email)
10: .Count();
11: if (accountNumber > 0)
12: {
13: throw new ApplicationException(string.Format("Your account {0} had been used.", accountToAdd.Email));
14: }
15:
16: // create entity
17: try
18: {
19: accountContext.Add(accountToAdd);
20: return true;
21: }
22: catch (Exception ex)
23: {
24: Trace.TraceInformation(ex.ToString());
25: }
26: return false;
27: }
I used
the Load method to retrieve
the IQueryable<Account> and use Where method to find
the accounts those email address are
the same as
the one is being registered. If it has I through an exception back to
the client side. Let’s run it and test from my simple client application.
Oops! Looks like we encountered an unexpected exception. It said
the “Count” is not support by
the ADO.NET Data Service LINQ managed library. That is because
the table storage managed library (aka. TableServiceContext) is based on
the ADO.NET Data Service and it supports very limit LINQ operation. Although I didn’t find a full list or documentation about which LINQ methods it supports I could even refer a page on msdn here. It gives us a roughly summary of which query operation
the ADO.NET Data Service managed library supports and which doesn't. As you see
the Count method is not in
the supported list.
Not only
the query operation, there inner lambda expression in
the Where method are limited when using
the ADO.NET Data Service managed library as well.
For example if you added (a => !a.DateDeleted.HasValue) in
the Where method to exclude those deleted account it will raised an exception said "Invalid Input". Based on my experience you should always use
the simple comparison (such as ==, >, <=, etc.) on
the simple members (such as string, integer, etc.) and do not use any shortcut methods (such as string.Compare, string.IsNullOrEmpty etc.).
1: // validation
2: var accountNumber = accountContext.Load()
3: .Where(a => a.Email == accountToAdd.Email)
4: .ToList()
5: .Count;
6: if (accountNumber > 0)
7: {
8: throw new ApplicationException(string.Format("Your account {0} had been used.", accountToAdd.Email));
9: }
We changed
the a bit and try again.
Since I had created an account with my mail address so this time it gave me an exception said that
the email had been used, which is correct.
Repository Pattern for Table Service
The AccountDataContext takes
the responsibility to save and load
the account entity but only for that specific entity. Is that possible to have a dynamic or generic DataContext class which can operate any kinds of entity in my system? Of course yes. Although there's no typical database in table service we can threat
the entities as
the records, similar with
the data entities if we used OR Mapping. As we can use some patterns for ORM architecture here we should be able to adopt
the one of them - Repository Pattern in this example.
We know that
the base class - TableServiceContext provide 4 methods for operating
the table entities which are CreateQuery, AddObject, UpdateObject and DeleteObject. And we can create a relationship between
the enmity class,
the table container
name and entity set
name. So it's really simple to have a generic base class for any kinds of entities. Let's rename
the AccountDataContext to DynamicDataContext and make
the type of Account as a type parameter if it.
1: public class DynamicDataContext<T> : TableServiceContext where T : TableServiceEntity
2: {
3: private CloudStorageAccount _storageAccount;
4: private string _entitySetName;
5:
6: public DynamicDataContext(CloudStorageAccount storageAccount)
7: : base(storageAccount.TableEndpoint.AbsoluteUri, storageAccount.Credentials)
8: {
9: _storageAccount = storageAccount;
10: _entitySetName = typeof(T).Name;
11:
12: var tableStorage = new CloudTableClient(_storageAccount.TableEndpoint.AbsoluteUri,
13: _storageAccount.Credentials);
14: tableStorage.CreateTableIfNotExist(_entitySetName);
15: }
16:
17: public void Add(T entityToAdd)
18: {
19: AddObject(_entitySetName, entityToAdd);
20: SaveChanges();
21: }
22:
23: public void Update(T entityToUpdate)
24: {
25: UpdateObject(entityToUpdate);
26: SaveChanges();
27: }
28:
29: public void Delete(T entityToDelete)
30: {
31: DeleteObject(entityToDelete);
32: SaveChanges();
33: }
34:
35: public IQueryable<T> Load()
36: {
37: return CreateQuery<T>(_entitySetName);
38: }
39: }
I saved
the name of
the entity type when constructed for performance matter.
The table
name, entity set
name would be
the same as
the name of
the entity class.
The Load method returned a generic IQueryable instance which supports
the lazy load feature. Then in my service class I changed
the AccountDataContext to DynamicDataContext and that's all.
1: var accountContext = new DynamicDataContext<Account>(storageAccount);
Run it again and register another account.
The DynamicDataContext now can be used for any entities. For example, I would like
the account has a list of notes which contains 3 custom properties: Account Email, Title and Content. We create
the note entity class.
1: public class Note : TableServiceEntity
2: {
3: public string AccountEmail { get; set; }
4: public string Title { get; set; }
5: public string Content { get; set; }
6: public DateTime DateCreated { get; set; }
7: public DateTime? DateDeleted { get; set; }
8:
9: public Note()
10: : base()
11: {
12: }
13:
14: public Note(string email)
15: : base(email, string.Format("{0}_{1}", email, Guid.NewGuid().ToString()))
16: {
17: AccountEmail = email;
18: }
19: }
And no need to tweak
the DynamicDataContext we can directly go to
the service class to implement
the logic. Notice here I utilized two DynamicDataContext instances with
the different type parameters: Note and Account.
1: public class NoteService : INoteService
2: {
3: public void Create(string email, string title, string content)
4: {
5: var storageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.FromConfigurationSetting("DataConnectionString");
6: var accountContext = new DynamicDataContext<Account>(storageAccount);
7: var noteContext = new DynamicDataContext<Note>(storageAccount);
8:
9: // validate - email must be existed
10: var accounts = accountContext.Load()
11: .Where(a => a.Email == email)
12: .ToList()
13: .Count;
14: if (accounts <= 0)
15: throw new ApplicationException(string.Format("
The account {0} does not exsit in
the system please register and try again.", email));
16:
17: // save
the note
18: var noteToAdd = new Note(email) { Title = title, Content = content, DateCreated = DateTime.Now };
19: noteContext.Add(noteToAdd);
20: }
21: }
And updated our client application to test
the service.
I didn't implement any list service to show all notes but we can have a look on
the local SQL database if we ran it at local development fabric.
Summary
In this post I explained a bit about
the limited LINQ support for
the table service. And then I demonstrated about how to use
the repository pattern in
the table service data access layer and make
the DataContext dynamically.
The DynamicDataContext I created in this post is just a prototype. In fact we should create
the relevant interface to make it testable and for better structure we'd better separate
the DataContext classes for each individual kind of entity. So it should have IDataContextBase<T>, DataContextBase<T> and for each entity we would have
class AccountDataContext<Account> : IDataContextBase<Account>, DataContextBase<Account> { … }
class NoteDataContext<Note> : IDataContextBase<Note>, DataContextBase<Note> { … }
Besides
the structured data saving and loading, another common scenario would be saving and loading some binary data such as images, files. In my next post I will show how to use
the Blob Service to store
the bindery data - make
the account be able to upload their logo in my example.
Hope this helps,
Shaun
All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind.
Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons License.
