Note: this is a cross post from my own blog.

Since version 3.2.0 NHibernate  has an embedded strategy for mapping by code, that basically comes from Fabio Maulo’s ConfORM. With some reading at this Fabio post,  this other one, and this one too, I wrote my own sample just to see what we can do.

Even if we can use mapping by code to map class by class the entire model, something more interesting can be done by writing some convention-based automatic mapper, that can help us even when we face legacy ( non code first ) databases with some (perverted) naming convention.

We have to consider first the ModelMapper class, this class in the NH mapping by code is the one responsible for driving the mapping generator. It provides a suite of events to intercept the actual generation of each elements in the mapping. By listening these event we can decorate the detail of the single element, for example the Id generator class, the SqlType, the column name, and so on. ModelMapper uses a ModelInspector to get the way we want to map each portion of the entity ( properties, many-to-one, collections ), or if we have a component, or a subclass and so on. We realize our AutoMapper class by deriving a ModelMapper and internally subscribing some events, and passing to it a custom ModelInspector ( we named it AutoModelInspector ).

Let’s start with a very basic model:

Basically an entity that unidirectionally associates with a referred one. Let’s say we have these example database conventions:

• Identifier column are named “c”+EntityName+”Id” and are autoincrement
• Column description are named “txt”+EntityName+”Descr”
• Column of type string have to be prefixed with “txt”
• Column of type string have to be AnsiString ( for DDL generation of CHAR instead of NChar )
• Foreign key column have to be called “c”+ForeignEntityName+”Id”

So let’s see how we wrote the custom model mapper:

class AutoMapper:ModelMapper
    {
        public AutoMapper()
            : base(new AutoModelInspector())
        {
            //subscribe required ebvents for this simple strategy ...
            this.BeforeMapClass += new RootClassMappingHandler(AutoMapper_BeforeMapClass);
            this.BeforeMapProperty += new PropertyMappingHandler(AutoMapper_BeforeMapProperty);
            this.BeforeMapManyToOne += new ManyToOneMappingHandler(AutoMapper_BeforeMapManyToOne);
            //...
            //other events....
        }
        
        void AutoMapper_BeforeMapManyToOne(IModelInspector modelInspector, PropertyPath member, IManyToOneMapper propertyCustomizer)
        {
            //
            // name the column for many to one as
            // "c"+foreignEntityName+"id"
            //
            var pi = member.LocalMember as PropertyInfo;
            if (null != pi)
            {
                propertyCustomizer.Column(k => k.Name("c"+pi.PropertyType.Name+"Id"));
            }
        }

        void AutoMapper_BeforeMapProperty(IModelInspector modelInspector, PropertyPath member, IPropertyMapper propertyCustomizer)
        {
            //
            // Treat description as a special case: "txt"+EntityName+"Descr"
            // but for all property of type string prefix with "txt"
            //
            if (member.LocalMember.Name == "Description")
            {
                propertyCustomizer.Column(k =>
                    {
                        k.Name("txt" + member.GetContainerEntity(modelInspector).Name + "Descr");
                        k.SqlType("AnsiString");
                    }
                    );
            }
            else
            {
                var pi = member.LocalMember as PropertyInfo;
                
                if (null != pi && pi.PropertyType == typeof(string))
                {
                    propertyCustomizer.Column(k =>
                    {
                        k.Name("txt" + member.LocalMember.Name);
                        k.SqlType("AnsiString");
                    }
                   );
                }
            }
        }
       
        void AutoMapper_BeforeMapClass(IModelInspector modelInspector, Type type, IClassAttributesMapper classCustomizer)
        {
            //
            // Create the column name as "c"+EntityName+"Id"
            //
            classCustomizer.Id(k => { k.Generator(Generators.Native); k.Column("c" + type.Name + "Id"); });
        }

        
    }

The event handlers apply the convention we said before. As we see we pass a special model inspector in the constructor, that is implemented as below:

class AutoModelInspector:IModelInspector
    {
        #region IModelInspector Members

       
        public IEnumerable<string> GetPropertiesSplits(Type type)
        {
            return new string[0];
        }

        public bool IsAny(System.Reflection.MemberInfo member)
        {
            return false;
        }

        
        public bool IsComponent(Type type)
        {
            return false;
        }

       
        public bool IsEntity(Type type)
        {
            return true;
        }

       
        
        public bool IsManyToOne(System.Reflection.MemberInfo member)
        {
            //property referring other entity is considered many-to-ones...
            var pi = member as PropertyInfo;
            if (null != pi)
            {
                return pi.PropertyType.FullName.IndexOf("MappingByCode") != -1;
            }
            return false;
        }

        public bool IsMemberOfComposedId(System.Reflection.MemberInfo member)
        {
            return false;
        }

        public bool IsMemberOfNaturalId(System.Reflection.MemberInfo member)
        {
            return false;
        }

      
        public bool IsPersistentId(System.Reflection.MemberInfo member)
        {
            return member.Name == "Id";
        }

        public bool IsPersistentProperty(System.Reflection.MemberInfo member)
        {
            return member.Name != "Id";
        }

        public bool IsProperty(System.Reflection.MemberInfo member)
        {
            if (member.Name != "Id") // property named id have to be mapped as keys...
            {
                var pi = member as PropertyInfo;
                if (null != pi)
                {
                    // just simple stading that if a property is an entity we have 
                    // a many-to-one relation type, so property is false
                    if (pi.PropertyType.FullName.IndexOf("MappingByCode") == -1)
                        return true;
                }

            }
            return false;
                
        }

        public bool IsRootEntity(Type type)
        {
            return type.BaseType == typeof(object);
        }

       
        
        public bool IsTablePerClassSplit(Type type, object splitGroupId, System.Reflection.MemberInfo member)
        {
            return false;
        }

       
        public bool IsVersion(System.Reflection.MemberInfo member)
        {
            return false;
        }

        #endregion
    }

As we say there is a bounch of IsXXXXX function, that are called for each portion of the class in order to know what to do with it. Our implementation is absolutely incomplete ( not implemented function omitted ), but it feet the simple requirement we stated. Then we can see how we actually realize the mapping:

static void Main(string[] args)
       {
           AutoMapper mapper = new AutoMapper();
          
           //this line simple rely on the fact
           //all and just the entities are exported...
           var map = mapper.CompileMappingFor(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetExportedTypes());

           //dump the mapping on the console
           XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(map.GetType());
           ser.Serialize(Console.Out, map);
       }

Simple, isn’t ?

The resulting map, as dumped on the console is:

That fulfill the actually simple requirements. So is just a matter of recognize the convention and the exceptions, and let’s go auto-mapping!