What's new in Intent Architect (November / December 2023)

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

Update details

.NET 8 support

All applicable modules have been updated to support .NET 8, in particular:

  • The Visual Studio Designer now allows selecting .NET 8 as the SDK version.
  • Many and all applicable modules have been updated so that when .NET 8 is used in the Visual Studio designer, generated .csproj files will reference .NET 8 versions of Microsoft NuGet packages.

Available from:

  • Intent.VisualStudio.Projects 3.5.0

OData Query support

This modules adds OData Query support to your CQRS paradigm service endpoints, specifically Querys.

OData Modeling

For more detail, refer to the module documentation.

Available from:

  • Intent.AspNetCore.ODataQuery 1.0.0

C# Code Management statement block merging improvements

Improvements have been made to code management within statement blocks.

  • For most statement types, old statements will now be removed from existing files when a template's output has changed.
  • Instead of using // [IntentMatch("…")] above statements to control how they match with a statement generated by a template, one should now use the more intuitive // [IntentFully(Match = "…")] or // [IntentIgnore(Match = "…")] instructions.

For more information on controlling statement code management behaviour, refer to our Docs article.

Available from:

  • Intent.OutputManager.RoslynWeaver 4.4.0

AutoMapper Projection support on EF repositories

The AutoMapper now has Projection support to Entity Framework Core Repositories.

The following methods will query the relevant Entity and the use AutoMapper's ProjectTo functionality to materialize the results.

Project To

Available from:

  • Intent.Application.AutoMapper 5.0.0

EF repository enhancements

Added several overloads to EF repositories to make generic LINQ features easier to express, for example OrderBy, Include, etc.

Repository Enhancements

Available from:

  • Intent.EntityFrameworkCore.Repositories 4.4.0

Indented and Data File builders for templates

New IndentedFile and DataFile classes have been introduced which work in essentially the same way as the CSharpFile class where they employ use of a builder pattern to allow easy authoring of templates.

Both of these new classes should be immediately familiar to anyone who has used the CSharpFile builder when authoring templates, they add an interface to the template allowing other modules to access them for potential manipulation without requiring a hard dependency. Furthermore, metadata can be added to the different parts of the files for further introspection and structure.

The IndentedFile class is used for authoring of simple "indented" files, it has a WithItems("…") and a WithContent("…") method. The former will increase indentation and the latter will add content at the current indentation.

The Datafile class is used for authoring of structured data files such as JSON and YAML and has methods such as WithArray("…"), WithObject("…") and WithValue("…").

To get started, ensure you have the latest module builder installed and create a New File Template:

New File Template context menu option

Then in the properties pane on the right, select the desired Template Method:

Template Method options

Once you've run the Software Factory, author your template:

public class YamlTestTemplate : IntentTemplateBase<object>, IDataFileBuilderTemplate
{
    [IntentManaged(Mode.Fully)]
    public const string TemplateId = "CustomModule.YamlTest";

    [IntentManaged(Mode.Fully, Body = Mode.Ignore)]
    public YamlTestTemplate(IOutputTarget outputTarget, object model = null) : base(TemplateId, outputTarget, model)
    {
        DataFile = new DataFile($"YamlTest")
            .WithYamlWriter()
            .WithRootObject(this, @object =>
            {
                @object
                    .WithObject("objectField", @object => {
                        @object.WithValue("field1", "value1");
                        @object.WithValue("field1", "value2");
                    })
                    .WithArray("arrayField", array => {
                        array.WithValue("value1");
                        array.WithValue("value2");
                    })
                    .WithValue("multilineField", """
                                                 A multiline statement's first line.
                                                 Additional line.
                                                 
                                                 After a blank line.
                                                 """)
                ;
            });
    }

    [IntentManaged(Mode.Fully)]
    public IDataFile DataFile { get; }

    [IntentManaged(Mode.Fully)]
    public override ITemplateFileConfig GetTemplateFileConfig() => DataFile.GetConfig();

    [IntentManaged(Mode.Fully)]
    public override string TransformText() => DataFile.ToString();
}

Available from:

  • Intent.ModuleBuilder 3.7.0
  • Intent.Common 3.5.0

HttpClient Proxy authorization propagation

When modeling Service Proxies which reference Services that require authentication, the module will now configure the Proxies such that they will forward your current HttpContext Authorization header along with the proxy request, if no Authorization header is present.

Available from:

  • Intent.Integration.HttpClients 5.0.8
  • Intent.Dapr.AspNetCore.ServiceInvocation 2.1.0

.NET 6+ Simple Hosting Model

It is now possible to specify Use minimal hosting model and Use top-level statements on .NET Projects when their SDK is set to Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web:

Use top-level statements and minimal hosting model options.

Note

Installing the updated version of the Intent.VisualStudio.Projects module will cause several other module to have their versions bumped as they needed to be updated to correctly update either Startup.cs or Program.cs depending on the settings chosen.

Available from:

  • Intent.VisualStudio.Projects 3.5.0

Account Controller improvements

The Account Controller's refresh token endpoint has been improved in the following ways to be more inline with Microsoft's identity management API introduced with .NET 8:

  • The RefreshToken token endpoint has had its name changed to Refresh, verb changed from GET to POST and the RefreshToken is now to be supplied in the body of the request.
  • The access token is no longer supplied in the body or query string and the endpoint is instead decorated with an [Authorized] attribute meaning that, as usual for secured endpoints, the access token will now need to supplied in the header.
  • When using the refresh token endpoint, the returned access token now has its claims updated with the latest for the user.

Available from:

  • Intent.AspNetCore.Identity.AccountController 3.0.1

RabbitMQ Trigger for Azure Functions added

We have made an improvement on the Azure Functions module, which now includes the ability to select RabbitMQ Triggers for queue integration. This feature allows developers to create functions that are triggered by messages in a RabbitMQ queue, providing a seamless integration between Azure Functions and RabbitMQ.

Azure Functions - RabbitMQ Trigger

Available from:

  • Intent.AzureFunctions 4.0.13

EF Bulk Operations module

This module provides patterns for doing Bulk data operation with Entity Framework Core using EFCore BulkExtensions.

For more detail, refer to the module documentation.

Available from:

  • Intent.EntityFrameworkCore.BulkOperations 1.0.0

Documentation on Designer Scripting with JavaScript

We've created an article that introduces and explains the designer scripting capabilities of Intent Architect which provides a scripting editor for automating various operations, such as creating elements and associations, and offers TypeScript declarations for understanding the available functions.

The article also explains how to use event-triggered scripts for associations and elements, enabling developers to execute custom logic when specified events occur.

The new article is now available for you to read and please share with us whether you found this article helpful. Click here to read it.

Email Address Validation

An "Email Address" checkbox property has been added to the "Validation" stereotype, when checked it applies the Email Validator in FluentValidation modules and the EmailAddressAttribute in DataAnnotations modules.

Available from:

  • Intent.Application.FluentValidation 3.8.7
  • Intent.Application.FluentValidation.Dtos 3.7.3
  • Intent.Application.MediatR.FluentValidation 4.5.0
  • Intent.Blazor.HttpClients.Dtos.DataAnnotations 1.0.1
  • Intent.Blazor.HttpClients.Dtos.FluentValidation 1.0.3

Synchronous method support on EF repositories

Added support for Synchronous versions of EF repository methods. This option is off by default but can be opted into through application settings, Database Settings -> Add synchronous methods to repositories.

Available from:

  • Intent.EntityFrameworkCore.Repositories 4.4.0

Prevent Basic Auditing's "created" column values from being updated later

The Basic Auditing pattern now ensures that any attempted changes to the CreatedBy and CreatedDate properties on entities being updated are discarded before being saved to the database.

Available from:

  • Intent.Entities.BasicAuditing 1.0.2

IApplicationDbContext interface

It is now possible to enable generation of an IApplicationDbContext interface for use in an application's "Application" layer to allow access to Entity Framework's DbSets. See the module documentation for more information.

Available from:

  • Intent.EntityFrameworkCore 4.5.0

Enable Entity Framework split queries

It is now possible to enable split queries globally by selecting the Enable split queries globally application setting.

Available from:

  • Intent.EntityFrameworkCore 4.5.0

AutoMapper version upgrade

AutoMapper modules updated to use the latest AutoMapper NuGet packages.

Available from:

  • Intent.Application.AutoMapper 5.0.0
  • Intent.Application.DependencyInjection.AutoMapper 4.0.0