Nested Facets & Preserve data annotations in GenerateDtosAttribute?

[michaeldimoudis]

Hey there, firstly I'm really loving this library.

I see y ou have added Nested Facets in #92 and Preserve Data Annotations #94, how hard will it be to do the same to GenerateDtosAttribute on Entity Framework models?

Is this on your schedule? Do you need any help if so?

Thank you

[Tim-Maes]

Hello @michaeldimoudis , thank you!

Let's think about this.

When using the [Facet] attribute, you're creating a 1-to-1 projection of a model with all (or a subset of) properties. Since it's semantically the same entity, we can preserve the relationship structure, attributes, and so on, if the user desires. The current NestedFacets implementation makes sense in this context.

With the [GenerateDtos] attribute, we generate multiple models, each with a different purpose (Create, Update, Response, Query, Upsert). I don't think we can simply copy the data annotations and nesting logic from the Facet generator.
However, I do believe we should support complex types.

It's certainly possible to achieve such behavior. We could go full auto-detect, and just spit out the dto models for navigation properties - and include them in the (relevant) generated dtos. Or we can make explicit configuration, similar like NestedFacets wherethe user can specify to the generator exactly what nested types or navigation properties are included.

I'm kinda leaning toward explicit configuration (atleast for a V1 of this) to avoid unexpected behavior, but I'm curious about your thoughts and opinions!

[michaeldimoudis]

Thanks for that. I'm leaning towards explicit too.

Data annotations I don't personally have an immediate need for.

But nested facets would be useful. An example of an immediate problem is 2 entities. Organizations and AccountManagers. There can be a many to many relationship here. So querying an organisation can return the list of account managers. But the account managers entity also has a list of organisations.

So the JSON returned of the dto has the organisation, the account managers, but each account manager has an empty list of organizations.

At the moment I just go one way and set [JsonIgnore] attribute on Organizations in account manager.

Would be great to have a nested facet and choose a generated dto that excludes Organization in AccountManager.

Thoughts?

[Levvy055]

When having annotation that we want to preserve why not use something like [FacetAttribute] or other word