What's new in Intent Architect (August 2024)

Welcome to the August 2024 edition of highlights of What's New in Intent Architect.

Update details

Intent Architect v4.3 beta release

The 4.3 beta is available as a side-by-side install, so you can keep your current version of Intent Architect running alongside the beta. The beta can be acquired from our downloads page in the Pre-Release(s) section.

Preview 4.3

If you would like to experience the front-end design capabilities visit our MudBlazor sample repository on GitHub.

For full details on what's in this release, check out the 4.3 release notes.

Service security modeling

We have added a new feature for the Service Designer letting you model service endpoint Roles and Policys. You can now add these as follows:

Roles and Policies modeled in the service designer

And then use these modeled concepts on your Authorize / Secured stereotypes, as follows:

Configure roles/policies in stereotypes

There is also an option to migrate your existing security configuration to this new system.

For more detailed information, see the module documentation.

Available from:

  • Intent.AspNetCore.Controllers 6.0.9

HttpClient authorization provider security option

Our Intent.Integration.HttpClients module now has a new Authorization Setup option in the Integration Http Client Settings section of application settings.

The option is Authorization Header Provider, which allows you to inject a scoped service that can resolve the proxy service call's Authorization header. This mechanism is very flexible and can be extended for a variety of security scenarios.

For more detailed information, see the module documentation.

Available from:

  • Intent.Integration.HttpClients 5.1.9

Ordered pagination for CRUD patterns

Our CRUD pagination patterns now support an OrderBy parameter, which allows you to specify the ordering for the pagination.

Sample Query

The order by is specified using dynamic LINQ, for example Surname desc, Name asc.

For more detailed information, see the module documentation

Available from:

  • Intent.Application.MediatR.CRUD 6.0.14
  • Intent.Application.Dtos.Pagination 4.0.10

MongoDB Integration Testing support

The Intent.AspNetCore.IntegrationTesting module now has support for our MongoDB modules. The module will provision and wire-up a MongoDB container, using Testcontainers.MongoDb, for the integration tests to run against.

For more detailed information, see the module documentation.

Available from:

  • Intent.AspNetCore.IntegrationTesting 1.0.5

MongoDB repository query improvements

We've improved the MongoDB repository pattern to have better LINQ support.

The following LINQ methods have been added:

Task<IPagedList<TDomain>> FindAllAsync(
    int pageNo, 
    int pageSize,
    Func<IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>, IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>> queryOptions,
    CancellationToken cancellationToken = default);

Task<TDomain?> FindAsync(
    Func<IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>, IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>> queryOptions, 
    CancellationToken cancellationToken = default);

Task<List<TDomain>> FindAllAsync(
    Func<IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>, IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>> queryOptions, 
    CancellationToken cancellationToken = default);

Task<int> CountAsync(
    Func<IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>, IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>>? queryOptions = default, 
    CancellationToken cancellationToken = default);

Task<bool> AnyAsync(
    Func<IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>, IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>>? queryOptions = default, 
    CancellationToken cancellationToken = default);

Available from:

  • Intent.MongoDb.Repositories 1.2.0

Cosmos DB repository query improvements

Our Cosmos DB repository pattern has been improved in the following ways:

  • New methods providing LINQ access.
  • Protected methods making SQL more accessible for inherited repositories.

The following LINQ methods have been added:

Task<IPagedList<TDomain>> FindAllAsync(
    int pageNo, 
    int pageSize,
    Func<IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>, IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>> queryOptions,
    CancellationToken cancellationToken = default);

Task<TDomain?> FindAsync(
    Func<IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>, IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>> queryOptions, 
    CancellationToken cancellationToken = default);

Task<List<TDomain>> FindAllAsync(
    Func<IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>, IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>> queryOptions, 
    CancellationToken cancellationToken = default);

Task<int> CountAsync(
    Func<IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>, IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>>? queryOptions = default, 
    CancellationToken cancellationToken = default);

Task<bool> AnyAsync(
    Func<IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>, IQueryable<TDocumentInterface>>? queryOptions = default, 
    CancellationToken cancellationToken = default);

The following SQL methods have been added:

protected async Task<List<TDomain>> FindAllAsync(
    QueryDefinition queryDefinition,
    CancellationToken cancellationToken = default);

protected async Task<TDomain?> FindAsync(
    QueryDefinition queryDefinition,
    CancellationToken cancellationToken = default);

Available from:

  • Intent.CosmosDB 1.2.0

OpenAPI Importer improvements

The importer now respects the following OpenAPI concepts when importing service definitions:

  • secured
  • required
  • allOf
  • x-enumNames

There have also been various smaller improvements which make the tool better at interpreting OpenAPI documents.

Available from:

  • Intent.OpenApi.Importer 1.1.0

HttpClient grouped configuration

You can now have a single configuration for all service proxies from a single package, instead of having to configure each one individually. You can still configure them individually if you require variation.

{
  "HttpClients": {
    "SomeApplication.Services": {
      "Uri": "https://localhost:44350/",
      "Timeout": "00:01:00"
    }
  }
}

For more information, check out the module documentation.

Available from:

  • Intent.Integration.HttpClients 5.1.9

Cosmos DB explicit optimistic concurrency

The repository already had support for implicit optimistic concurrency, ensuring documents written to Cosmos had not changed since they were read within the same service call. You can now leverage the ETag directly for more scenarios including cross service calls.

For more information, check out the module documentation.

Available from:

  • Intent.CosmosDB 1.2.1

Domain Service support for Generic types

You can now model Domain Services with Generic type operations.

Generic Type Operation

Available from:

  • Intent.DomainServices 1.1.5

Ignore endpoints for OpenAPI

It is now possible to prevent endpoints from being generated in OpenAPI specifications, and by implication making them ignored by other tools using the OpenAPI specification, such as Swagger UI.

To ignore an endpoint, apply the OpenAPI Settings stereotype to a Command, Query, Service Operation, or Azure Function and select the Ignore checkbox:

OpenAPI Settings stereotype

When applied, it will add an [ApiExplorerSettings(IgnoreApi = true)] attribute to controllers and/or methods for ASP.NET Core WebAPI or the [OpenApiIgnore] attribute to Azure Functions.

Available from:

  • Intent.AspNetCore.Controllers 6.0.9
  • Intent.AzureFunctions 4.1.1

Advanced Mapping system tutorial for module builders

Module builders wishing to leverage Intent Architect's advanced mapping system can now refer to our Tutorial: Advanced Mapping for a guide on how to do so.