How are request parameters mapped into RenderingModel of magnolia? - freemarker

Im using Magnolia RenderingModel in combination with Freemarker.
I have URLs like the following:
http://anyPath/context?productTypes=XXXXX&productTypes=YYYYY
my rendering model class looks like:
class MyModel extends RenderingModelImpl {
...
private String[] productTypes;
...
}
However the mentioned array contains only the first value, but not the second.
I checked the behaviour of template directives like ctx.getParameters(). This shows the same behaviour, I get only the first value returned. But if im using ctx.getParameterValues(paramName), it returns both values.
This leads me to following questions:
How would I go, if I want to lookup how the request parameters are mapped into the rendering model, or better:
How can i change the behaviour of that ?
Can anyone acknowledge, that this behaviour is wrong ?

It used to be mentioned in documentation and I believe it still is - if you use .getParameters() you get only first value for multivalue parameter. If you want to get all the values, you need to use .getParameterValues(String param).
From what I understand reasons for that were backward compatibility.
As for changing the behavior, you would need to write your own renderer (e.g. by extending default FreemarkerRenderer and override info.magnolia.rendering.renderer.AbstractRenderer.newModel(Class<T>, Node, RenderableDefinition, RenderingModel<?>) method which instantiates and populates the model class.
Alternatively you can provide fix for above set population method and submit it to Magnolia as a patch. While the .getParameters() behavior is iirc on purpose, the model param population might not be, so you have high chance of getting that changed.

Related

Best practice of creation GET methods with many parameters(filters)

I have the GET method in my Spring REST controller. This method returns the list of users by the filter.
I have a few ways to implement it:
Add #PathVariable like - /users/{type}/{age}/{name}/...(bad approach in this case)
Add #RequestParam like - /users?type=type,age=age,name=name...(usual approach in this case)
Use RequestDto (the best approach) like
public class UsersRequestDto {
private String type;
private int age;
private String name;
...
}
But I can not use GET method for this. I must use POST method with #RequestBody
And it breaks the rules. My method doesn't change state and doesn't create any entities. It workes as the GET method but in reality, it is POST.
And I have 2 ways:
Use the GET method with many parameters
Use the POST method with DTO which works as the GET method and confuses users.
Which way is better?
Short version: you might be looking for How to bind #RequestParam to object in Spring. (See also: https://stackoverflow.com/a/16942352/54734 )
On the web, we would have an html form with a GET action. When the form is submitted, the browser would process the input controls and create the application/x-www-form-urlencoded representation of the form data. For a GET action, that representation is used as the query string.
Using GET, and encoding all of the information into the query string, allows us to take advantage of general purpose caching of the results.
But the query parameters aren't accessible by themselves - they are actually embedded within the larger context of the HTTP request. We don't usually see that because, once again, general purpose components can do a lot of the heavy lifting.
So we don't see the parser that extracts the target-uri from the request, or the parser that splits the target URI into its separate components, or the parser that splits the query part into a sequence of key value pairs....
In general, what we do is ride the "general purpose" implementation as far as we can, then get off and do the rest of the work ourselves. If the framework offered no better support for object mapping, that could mean implementing that mapping ourselves.
So if our framework lacked the capability to map the query string directly to an object representation, we would hand roll that part of the implementation ourselves (either by copying each parameter "by hand", or writing our own reflection code to do the mapping automagically).
But it seems that Spring has that capability already built into it; and that it is the default option (no annotation required); you just have to be sure that the object implementation provides the interface that Spring needs to execute the mapping.
How many different parameters are you including in your query?
Personally, I prefer the option of a GET method with many different parameters. It has other benefits such as being cacheable as well. Also, compare it to something like a the URL that a Google search generates - lots of query string parameters.
The POST option feels dirty - it's a violation of what a POST should actually do (creating or updating a resource).
See these discussions: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/233164/how-do-searches-fit-into-a-restful-interface and REST API Best practices: Where to put parameters?
1st of all when you are using RequestParam then key will be added with & symbol not with comma(,) .
when you want to filter ( as you have mentioned) something then best approach would be to use RequestParam.
To minimize the code you can opt to "MultiValueMap" or "HttpservletRequest" .
1)HttpServletRequest
#GetMapping("/user")
public List<User> getFilteredUser(HttpServletRequest httpservlet)
httpservlet.getQuesryString() //will return all request param.
2)MultiValueMap
#RequestParam MultiValueMap<String,String> params
NOTE:- Generally POST is for create/update record.

best practice to get the default object wrapper?

when creating custom method, I implements TemplateMethodModelEx and returns SimpleSequence object.
according to the API, I should use this constructor:
SimpleSequence(ObjectWrapper wrapper)
since I am setting incompatibleImprovements as 2.3.24, the doc said I can simply use Configuration instance's getObjectWrapper(). My problem is when implementing TemplateMethodModelEx, I have no access to the current config unless I pass cfg to the method's constuctor. then the root.put would look like:
root.put("getMeList", new GetMeListMethod(cfg));
this looks odd to me, i wonder whats the right to construct this kind of SimpleSquence model and whats the right way to get the default object wrapper.
Thanks a lot
You should pass in the ObjectWrapper as the constructor parameter. (It's unrelated to incompatibleImprovements 2.3.24.) Any TemplateModel that creates other TemplateModel-s (like TemplteSequenceModel-s, TemplateHashModel-s, TemplateMethodModel-s) used to work like that. This is normally not apparent because they are created by an ObjectWrapper. If you do the TemplateModel-s manually however (which is fine), then you will face this fact.

Get Class of Map in FreeMarker

I want to get a variable's class type in freemarker, used var.class.simpleName;
but if var is a Map, freemarker will process class as a key to find value in var.
it throw exception. how can I do this ? thanks for any suggestion.
First I have to ask why do you need that, because FreeMarker templates aren't supposed to know even if var is Map at all. Maybe your data-model is not what the template needs.
Anyway, for now, I would write a custom TemplateMethodModelEx for this purpose, something that you can use like ${classOf(var)}. Inside the TemplateMethodModelEx implementation you will receive a TemplateModel as the argument value, and then you can check if it's an AdapterTemplateModel, and if so you can get back the original object and get its class. (If it's not a AdapterTemplateModel, then it perhaps isn't even a wrapped Java object, so it doesn't make sense to ask what the class of the original object is.) However, the DefaultObjectWrapper with incompatibleImprovements set to less than 2.3.22 doesn't give AdapterTemplateModel to wrapped Map-s... so in 2.3.21 you will still have to use BeansWrapper, but you can at least set simpleMapWrapper to true.
In 2.3.22 it will be actually possible to write ${var?api.class}... you might use the nightly build. Though it only supposed to solve the problem where you can't access business methods because the primary type of the business class is Map.

acceptable MVC parameter usage

would it be considered a valid implementation if I do not use the model for certain parameters? For example a webform posting values directly to the controller which then passes them to another class. Is it necessary to make sure that all the fields in the webform are also referenced/stored in the model?
I consider it a valid implementation, but suggest that you do this only if the parameters you want to exclude from the Model are absolutely NOT going to be used by the View (other than for confirmation of data entry in your webform), AND there is no need for the parameters to be referenced again once handled by the Controller.
Yes, it would work, strictly speaking.
However, you probably want to use the model. You don't want to create a new variable every time you run the view, which would happen if you use the controller.
I would consider it valid implementation if you decided not to use the model for certain parameters. I believe there are instances where certain fields may not relate directly to the model in question therefore giving valid reason to break those fields/parameters off from the model.

Is there a reason why the default modelbinder doesn't bind to fields?

I'm using ASP.NET MVC3 and i'm wondering that the default modelbinder binds to public properties but not to public fields.
Normally i just define the model classes with properties but sometimes i use some predefined classes which contains some fields. And everytime i have to debug and remember that the modelbinder just don't like fields.
The question: Whats the reason behind it?
but sometimes i use some predefined classes which contains some fields
While I cannot answer your question about the exact reason why the default model binder works only with properties (my guess is that it respects better encapsulation this way and avoids modifying internal state of the object which is what fields represent) I can say that what you call predefined classes should normally be view models. You should always use view models to and from your controller actions. Those view models are classes that are specifically defined to meet the requirements of the given view.
So back to the main point: fields are supposed to be modified only from within the given class. They should not be accessed directly from the outside. They represent and hold internal state of the class. Properties on the other hand is what should be exposed to the outside world. Imagine that in the property getter/setter you had some custom logic. By modifying directly the field this custom logic would be broken and potentially bring the object into an inconsistent state.
Maybe the reason for ignoring fields is to increase performance of the binder. Instead of searching all the Fields and properties. The Model Binder search for Properties only.
Though I think the Model Binder use cache to improve performance.
DefaultModelBinder exposes a public method:
DefaultModelBinder.BindModel, and a number of protected method available for overriding. All of them listed here.
Besides the model, these method refer to properties only, not fields, like
GetModelProperties,
GetFilteredModelProperties,
GetPropertyValue,
OnXYZValidating,
OnXYZValidated,
OnXYZUpdating,
OnXYZUpdated,
GetXYZValue,
where XYZ stands for either Model, or Property/ies, or both, and so on.
As you can see there is no Fields mentioned with these names whatsoever. As Darin explained no direct changes to Model's state are tolerated by the Binder. Hence no Field in its methods.
And also, you may wish to take a look at another important class: ModelBindingContext. An instance of this class gets passed to the BindModel, and subsequently to BindSimpleModel, and BindComplexModel, depending on model type (string, int,... are considered simple, everything else is complex).
So, this context has the following properties:
ModelXYZ, and
PropertyXYZ.
In other words you have no means to reference the fields in your ViewModel unless you do not override these classes and undertake special actions to do so.
But again, beware of fighting the framework, its always easier to follow it instead.
EDIT: The ModelMetadata class holds all the data needed to bind the model. Its code however, shows no sign of fields, field names, etc. Only properties are referenced and accessed. So, even if you try to inherit and override DefaultModelBinder and ModelBinderContext, you still won't be able to access fiellds, nevermind what their access modifier is: public, private, etc.
Hope this explains most of it.

Resources