What's new in Intent Architect (September 2023)

Welcome to the September 2023 edition of highlights of What's New in Intent Architect.

Update details

Blazor WebAssembly bootstrap module

This modules bootstraps a Blazor WebAssembly project into an Intent Architect solution. This includes all the infrastructural setup and a functional Blazor WebAssembly sample.

Full details available in the documentation.

Available from:

  • Intent.Blazor.WebAssembly 1.0.0-alpha.2

Azure Function Cosmos DB Triggers

Our Azure Function modelling already had support for several trigger types, we have now added Cosmos DB Trigger to the list of supported triggers to model.

Full details available in the documentation

Available from:

  • Intent.AzureFunctions 4.0.9

Additional C# code management statement merging capabilities

It is now possible "replace" additional types of template generated statements with your own using a new [IntentMatch("…")] instruction:

// Template generated content:
[IntentManaged(Mode.Merge)]
public void Method()
{
    SomeOtherMethod(argument);
}

// Content in your file (will not be updated by the software factory):
[IntentManaged(Mode.Merge)]
public void Method()
{
    // [IntentMatch("SomeOtherMethod")]
    SomeOtherMethod(argument, additionalArgument);
}

For more information you can refer to this article.

Available from:

  • Intent.OutputManager.RoslynWeaver 4.3.0

Basic Auditing is now also applied to Cosmos DB entities

Basic Auditing of Entities is now also applied to Cosmos DB entities (previously it would only be applied to EF entities).

For more information on the Basic Auditing module, refer to its README.md.

Note

The Intent.EntityFrameworkCore.BasicAuditing module has now been marked as obsolete and has been replaced with the Intent.Entities.BasicAuditing module.

Available from:

  • Intent.Entities.BasicAuditing 1.0.0-pre.1

Software Factory CLI improvements

The Software Factory CLI tool has had significant quality of life improvements applied to it.

It will now by default run all Intent Architect Applications for an Intent Architect Solution, no more need to specify a specific Application's ID.

It will no longer show full output of runs unless an error occurs.

To facilitate diagnosing issues when they occur on a CI server, the output of a failed run now shows an easy to read summary of the outstanding changes along with diffs of Overwrite changes:

[INF] The following changes are outstanding:
[ERR] [🔵 Rename                ] Standard.AspNetCore.TestApplication.Application\Plurals\PluralsRenamedDtoMappingExtensions.cs
[ERR] [🔵 Rename                ] Standard.AspNetCore.TestApplication.Application\Plurals\PluralsRenamedDto.cs
[ERR] [🟢 Create                ] Standard.AspNetCore.TestApplication.Application\TheNewDto.cs
[WRN] [🟡 Overwrite (🚫 ignored)] Standard.AspNetCore.TestApplication.Application\Implementation\PluralsService.cs
[ERR] [🟡 Overwrite             ] Standard.AspNetCore.TestApplication.Application\Interfaces\IPluralsService.cs
[ERR] [🔴 Delete                ] Standard.AspNetCore.TestApplication.Application\ToDeleteDto.cs
[INF]  diff --git "a/C:\\Dev\\Intent.Modules.NET\\Tests\\Standard.AspNetCore.TestApplication\\Standard.AspNetCore.TestApplication.Application\\Plurals\\PluralsDtoMappingExtensions.cs" "b/C:\\Users\\User\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\intent\\Standard.AspNetCore.TestApplication\\Standard.AspNetCore.TestApplication.Application\\Plurals\\PluralsRenamedDtoMappingExtensions.cs"
[INF]  index 4495710..3482dff 100644
[INF]  --- "a/C:\\Dev\\Intent.Modules.NET\\Tests\\Standard.AspNetCore.TestApplication\\Standard.AspNetCore.TestApplication.Application\\Plurals\\PluralsDtoMappingExtensions.cs"
[INF]  +++ "b/C:\\Users\\User\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\intent\\Standard.AspNetCore.TestApplication\\Standard.AspNetCore.TestApplication.Application\\Plurals\\PluralsRenamedDtoMappingExtensions.cs"
[INF]  @@ -9,12 +9,12 @@ using Standard.AspNetCore.TestApplication.Domain.Entities;
[INF]
[INF]   namespace Standard.AspNetCore.TestApplication.Application.Plurals
[INF]   {
[INF] 🔴    public static class PluralsDtoMappingExtensions
[INF] 🟢    public static class PluralsRenamedDtoMappingExtensions
[INF]       {
[INF] 🔴        public static PluralsDto MapToPluralsDto(this Domain.Entities.Plurals projectFrom, IMapper mapper)
[INF] 🔴            => mapper.Map<PluralsDto>(projectFrom);
[INF] 🟢        public static PluralsRenamedDto MapToPluralsRenamedDto(this Domain.Entities.Plurals projectFrom, IMapper mapper)
[INF] 🟢            => mapper.Map<PluralsRenamedDto>(projectFrom);
[INF]
[INF] 🔴        public static List<PluralsDto> MapToPluralsDtoList(this IEnumerable<Domain.Entities.Plurals> projectFrom, IMapper mapper)
[INF] 🔴            => projectFrom.Select(x => x.MapToPluralsDto(mapper)).ToList();
[INF] 🟢        public static List<PluralsRenamedDto> MapToPluralsRenamedDtoList(this IEnumerable<Domain.Entities.Plurals> projectFrom, IMapper mapper)
[INF] 🟢            => projectFrom.Select(x => x.MapToPluralsRenamedDto(mapper)).ToList();
[INF]       }
[INF]   }
[INF]  \ No newline at end of file

Available from:

  • Intent.SoftwareFactory.CLI 4.0.5

Blazor Server bootstrap module

This modules bootstraps a Blazor Server infrastructure into an existing Intent Architect ASP.Net Core solution. This include wiring into the existing infrastructural setup and a functional Blazor Server sample.

Full details available in the documentation.

Available from:

  • Intent.Blazor.Server 1.0.0-alpha.1

Intent Architect in your development environment article

This article covers various aspect's of working with Intent Architect within your Software Development Life Cycle, and covers the following topics:

  • How Intent Architect solutions are structured on the file system.
  • Using Intent Architect solutions with Version Control.
  • Integrating Intent Architect solutions with your CI/CD Pipelines.
  • Configuring module discovery.

Available on our website here.

DB Schema Importer Filtering

There have been several enhancements made to our DB import tool, including the ability to filter which DB objects get imported, currently you can filter by:

  • Object Type, filter the import based on object type i.e Tables, Views, and/or Stored Procedures
  • Schema, Limit the import to one or more schemas.

Full details available in the documentation.

Available from:

  • Intent.SQLSchemaExtractor.exe 1.1.0

EF Core configurable lazy loading proxies

Historically our EF Core module generated the code such that is supported Lazy Loading Proxies, this is now configurable. It is turned on by default for backwards compatibility and can be turned if if this functionality is not desired.

Lazy Loading Settings

Full details available in the documentation.

Available from:

  • Intent.EntityFrameworkCore 4.4.11

Cosmos DB paging support

This module now supports paging functions of the repository, in-line with our other DB technology modules.

The Cosmos DB repositories now implement overloads as follows:


Task<IPagedResult<TDomain>> FindAllAsync(int pageNo, int pageSize, CancellationToken cancellationToken = default);
Task<IPagedResult<TDomain>> FindAllAsync(Expression<Func<TPersistence, bool>> filterExpression, int pageNo, int pageSize, CancellationToken cancellationToken = default);

Available from:

  • Intent.CosmosDB 1.0.0-alpha.22

Specify Default API Route Prefix

Define the API Route Prefix for newly created services.

Example:

Default Route API Prefix Settings Page

Becomes:

Commands with new Route API Prefix

Available from:

  • Intent.AspNetCore.Controllers 5.4.0

Validate unique constraints with Fluent Validation

Enabling this validation will look at your indexed fields to ensure the Fluent Validator can catch whether a Create/Update is violating a unique constraint.

Enable it from the Module Settings page:

Fluent Validation Unique constraint setting

Add an Index to the Entity:

Entity with Index

Ensure the Unique flag is set:

Index with unique flag

Add services that map to the Entity while using Fluent Validation for DTO validation:

Services mapped to Entity

After the Software Factory is executed, you will see code like this:

public class CreateContactPersonCommandValidator : AbstractValidator<CreateContactPersonCommand>
{
    private readonly IContactPersonRepository _contactPersonRepository;
    [IntentManaged(Mode.Merge)]
    public CreateContactPersonCommandValidator(IContactPersonRepository contactPersonRepository)
    {
        ConfigureValidationRules();
        _contactPersonRepository = contactPersonRepository;
    }

    private void ConfigureValidationRules()
    {
        RuleFor(v => v.FirstName)
            .NotNull();

        RuleFor(v => v.LastName)
            .NotNull();

        RuleFor(v => v.ContactNumber)
            .NotNull();

        RuleFor(v => v)
            .MustAsync(CheckUniqueConstraint_FirstName_LastName)
            .WithMessage("The combination of FirstName and LastName already exists.");
    }

    private async Task<bool> CheckUniqueConstraint_FirstName_LastName(
        CreateContactPersonCommand model,
        CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        return !await _contactPersonRepository.AnyAsync(p => p.FirstName == model.FirstName && p.LastName == model.LastName, cancellationToken);
    }
}

Available from:

  • Intent.Application.FluentValidation 3.8.1
  • Intent.Application.FluentValidation.Dtos 3.7.0
  • Intent.Application.MediatR.FluentValidation 4.4.0

Blazor FluentValidation module now available

This module generates Blazor compatible "client side" FluentValidation validators, these validators can be used to validate forms on every field change (if desired) without any calls to the server being required.

Please refer to the Intent.Application.FluentValidation module's README for more information on the generated validators as this module shares common logic with it.

Available from:

  • Intent.Blazor.HttpClients.Dtos.FluentValidation 1.0.0

Include XML documentation comments in generated OpenAPI/Swagger definitions

Intent could already generate XML documentation comments for your DTOs, DTO members and controller operations based on comments captured in Intent Architect designers, these comments can now also be visible on your OpenAPI/Swagger definitions.

For more information see the module's README.md.

Available from:

  • Intent.AspNetCore.Swashbuckle 4.0.8

Finbuckle Http Remote Store Support

It is now possible to choose Http Remote as a Store option for Multitenancy Settings:

Intent Architect Application Multitenancy Settings

Available from:

  • Intent.Modules.AspNetCore.MultiTenancy 4.1.8-pre.0

Updated modules to support Spring Boot v3

The Spring Boot module now supports a version selection setting to upgrade from v2 to v3. This not only provides Maven dependency updates and API code code changes, but also some improved patterns to existing code even under Spring Boot v2.

Available from:

  • Intent.Java.SpringBoot 3.6.0

Other Java modules that will require updates:

  • Intent.Java.SpringBoot.Security 3.4.0
  • Intent.Java.BeanValidation 3.4.0
  • Intent.Java.Domain.Maven 1.2.0
  • Intent.Java.ModelMapper 3.4.0
  • Intent.Java.Persistence.JPA.Queries 3.5.0
  • Intent.Java.Persistence.JPA 4.2.0
  • Intent.Java.Services.CRUD 3.6.0
  • Intent.Java.Spring.Data.Repositories 4.3.0
  • Intent.Java.SpringDoc.OpenApi 1.1.0
  • Intent.Java.Spring.Cors 3.4.0
  • Intent.Java.SpringBoot.Validation 3.4.0
  • Intent.Java.Domain 4.2.0

Domain entities moved away from using the Data annotation

Following best practices, the Java Spring Boot community suggests avoiding the @Data annotation from Lombok on domain entities. More details can be found in this article and this blog post.

Available from:

  • Intent.Java.Domain 4.2.0