Building an MVP Framework for .NET. Part 2: Implementing Core Functionality

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Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Basic Requirements
• Designing Key Classes
• Designing a Simple Views Manager
• Summary

Introduction

In the previous article, we have made our choice in favour of the Model-View-Presenter architectural pattern. Thus our final goal is the creation of the MVP Framework. However we should firstly make it clear what does “MVP Framework” mean by deciding what the future system will be intended for and what problems it will solve.

In this article, we will start with clarifying the aim of our system and gathering some basic requirements for it. After that we will proceed to the design and implementation stages creating fundamental classes that will meet our basic requirements.

Basic Requirements

The aim of our system can be formulated as follows: it should simplify the usage of the MVP pattern by developers. The system should make it easier to fulfill every common task within the MVP approach. For example it should simplify such actions as navigating between views, accessing controllers, etc. For each common operation, we will analyze how our system can help in performing it and by doing so we will construct requirements to the system. We will express the requirements in a popular form of use cases, each describing the desired interactions between a user and the system.

Starting a Task

To begin with, let us consider how a user would start a task. Starting a task implies certain processing (registering and initializing the task) so it would be nice to delegate this work to the system (MVP Framework). A user should be able to specify actions performed on a task started by implementing some OnStart method. Thus given a task descriptor the system should perform necessary processing and call the task OnStart handler.

Starting a task
    User: Pass the task descriptor to the system and ask to start the task.
    System: Register the task, initialize it and invoke OnStart handler.

Here a task descriptor is something that describes the task, specifically its structure and its properties. Let us decide what will be convenient to use as a task descriptor.

Since every task is a part of an application we might want to describe tasks directly in the source code of the application. A good way of defining an entity (such as task) in source code is using a type definition construct. Therefore a task type can be used as its descriptor. Moreover a task type (class) may define OnStart handler method and an instance of this type can hold the task state at runtime. So this is how the revised version of the “Starting a task” use case looks:

Starting a task (revision 1)
    User: Pass the task type to the system and ask to start the task.
    System: Create a task instance, register and initialize it and invoke its
            OnStart operation.

Of course there must be some Framework class which processes start task requests from a user. Let us call it TasksManager:

Navigating From Within a Task

Every task involves a number of views with transitions possible between them. At this point, let us discuss how a user would navigate to some view from a task code. Say some view should be activated in the OnStart handler code. It would be convenient if the navigation is done by the Framework and the navigation logic is isolated in some Navigator class. Then each user task instance should be associated with a proper navigator instance.

Navigating from within a task
    Precondition: The task is associated with a proper navigator instance.
    User: Ask that associated navigator to navigate to some view.
    System: Do the navigation, alter the task state.

It is important to note that the precondition requires each task to be linked to its navigator. Such linking may be done during the task start process. So here is the modified version of “Starting a task” use case:

Starting a task (revision 2)
    User: Pass the task type to the system and ask to start the task.
    System: Create a task and a navigator instances, initialize and link them
            together. Invoke the OnStart operation on the task instance.

Using Various Presentation Mechanisms

According to the MVP paradigm the system should make it easy to use different presentation mechanisms for example Web or Windows UI. A presentation mechanism has influence upon how switching between views is done. Therefore it seems quite reasonable to encapsulate view-switching code in a separate ViewsManager abstract class with subclasses for each specific UI kind. Then the Navigator class containing some common navigation logic will be associated with the ViewsManager class.

We cannot yet formulate any use case for this requirement however the arguments above proves the need of the ViewsManager concept. Thus the domain model at the moment looks as follows:

Describing a Task Structure

From the previous article we know that every task consists of a number of interaction points. Each interaction point in its turn is characterized by its view, controller and possible transitions to the other interaction points (in the previous article we decided to use "Controller" notation instead of "Presenter" so do not get confused with such naming). A picture illustrating this is below:

For each linked pair of source and target interaction points, the NavigationTrigger instance defines a trigger which should be called to perform the navigation. For example a trigger “Next” may cause a transition from “Step1” view to “Step2” view in a wizard-like application.

Notice that we don't specify any view type in the InteractionPointInfo class since specific view implementations are the prerogative of view managers.

As we have decided to describe a task by its type, let us find out how we can accompany a type definition in .NET with a task structural information. Interaction points can be declared in a form of constant fields inside the task type. This allows referencing interaction points in a compiler-checked way rather than using literal strings. For example one may call Navigate(MyTask.View1) instead of Navigate("View 1").

class WashDishesTask
{
    // Below are three interaction point definitions
    // with the view names specified
    public const string SelectDishes = "Select dishes view";
    public const string Dishwasher = "Dishwasher view";
    public const string WashComplete = "Wash complete view";
}

Such constant field alone describes an interaction point party, specifying only the view name. We need a means to accompany such fields with controller type and navigation triggers declarations. A good way to equip language elements (fields, in particular) in .NET with some additional info is using .NET custom attributes. In our case it might look as follows:

class WashDishesTask
{
    [InteractionPoint(typeof(SelectDishesController))]
    [NavTarget("Next", Dishwasher)]
    public const string SelectDishes = "Select dishes view";

    [InteractionPoint(typeof(DishwasherController))]
    [NavTarget("Next", WashComplete)]
    [NavTarget("Previous", SelectDishes)]
    public const string Dishwasher = "Dishwasher view";

    [InteractionPoint(typeof(WashCompleteController))]
    public const string WashComplete = "Wash complete view";
}

The suggested approach here for describing tasks seems to be more or less handy to start with. With it the revised version of the "Starting a task" use case looks so:

Starting a task (revision 3)
    User: Add fields describing interaction points to the task type. Equip these
          fields with [InteractionPoint] and [NavTarget] attributes. Then pass
          the task type to the system and ask to start the task.
    System: Extract the task information from its type. Create a task and a
            navigator instances, initialize and link them together. Invoke the
            OnStart operation on the task instance.

Accessing the Controller From a View and Vice Versa

According to the MVP pattern views handle user gestures and then pass control to the corresponding controller (and again I recall that we are using the "controller" name instead of "presenter"). Moreover in MVP (in contrast to MVC) controllers may access their views as well. Hence it should be easy for a user to access the controller from a view code and vice versa. In MVP this is solved by linking together each view with the corresponding controller instance.

Accessing the controller from a view and vice versa
    Precondition: View and its controller are linked to each other.
    User: Access that associated controller/view. 

For user’s convenience it should be the Framework job to link views and controllers together. Later when designing classes we will discuss which class will be responsible for such linking.

Accessing the Task and Navigating From a Controller

Controllers often need to request/modify their task state. So we may require each controller to be linked to its task.

Accessing the task from a controller
    Precondition: Controller is linked to its task.
    User: Access that associated task.

A controller may also need to trigger navigation to some view. This is done easily by accessing the task and then getting its navigator.

Navigating from within a controller
    Precondition: Controller is linked to its task which is connected to the
                  navigator
    User: Access the navigator through the associated task. Invoke the navigation.

We have discussed the most fundamental requirements for the future system. Based on these requirements, we are going to proceed to designing classes.

Designing Key Classes

Above we have introduced a number of fundamental concepts such as task, navigator and others by analyzing requirements for our system. These concepts with the relationships between them make up so called analysis model of the system. Analysis classes from this model usually turn into design classes by being equipped with operations, additional attributes and other details.

Here we are going to walk through all the requirements we have formulated and design classes based on the analysis model in order to meet these requirements.

TasksManager

First let us deal with the “Starting a task (revision 3)” use case and the TasksManager concept. According to this use case we may introduce a TasksManager class with a StartTask(taskType: Type) method. This method should create task and navigator instances, connect them to each other and invoke the task’s OnStart() method. It should also create a TaskInfo instance based on the task type. Tasks are designed by users however in order for the Framework to communicate with task instances the latter should conform to some interface. Let us call it ITask. There is also a requirement we have missed: tasks should be able to access their tasks manager, that is why the TasksManager should also link the created task to itself.

public class TasksManager
{
    public ITask StartTask(Type taskType)
    {
        TaskInfo ti = GetTaskInfo(taskType); // get TaskInfo from task type
        Navigator n = new Navigator(); // create navigator
        ITask t = CreateHelper.Create(taskType) as ITask; // create task

        t.TasksManager = this; // link the created task to itself
        n.Task = t; // connect the navigator to the task
        t.Navigator = n; // and the task to the navigator
        t.OnStart(); // invoke the task's OnStart()
        return t;
    }
}

GetTaskInfo is a method that extracts task information from a task type. Above we suggested to describe tasks by inserting constant fields to the type definition. However there may be other ways to equip a task type with the task information. Hence different methods to extract such information may exist. We will isolate the extraction logic in a ITaskInfoProvider interface with a GetTaskInfo(taskType: Type): TaskInfo method.

public interface ITaskInfoProvider
{
    TaskInfo GetTaskInfo(Type taskType);
}

It is worth keeping all configuration data including task and view descriptions in a centralized MVCConfiguration class. Then each tasks manager will be linked to its own MVCConfiguration instance:

public class TasksManager
    ...
    public MVCConfiguration Config
public class MVCConfiguration
    ...
    public ITaskInfoProvider TaskInfoProvider

A user may start a task of the same type more then once; and extracting the task information each time is redundant. That is why we need a repository object for all tasks configuration data. Let it be TaskInfoCollection instance.

public class MVCConfiguration
    ...
    public TaskInfoCollection TaskInfos

If the necessary task info object already exists in the inner hash table the TaskInfoCollection will return it, otherwise it will extract a new TaskInfo object from the task type with the help of the TaskInfoProvider class:

public class TaskInfoCollection
{
    private Hashtable taskInfos = new Hashtable();
    private MVCConfiguration mvcConfig;

    public TaskInfo this[Type taskType]
    {
        get
        {
            TaskInfo ti = taskInfos[taskType] as TaskInfo;
            if (ti == null)
            {
                ti = mvcConfig.TaskInfoProvider.GetTaskInfo(taskType);
                taskInfos[taskType] = ti;
            }
            return ti;
        }
        set { taskInfos[taskType] = value; }
    }
}

Finally this is how the TasksManager.GetTaskInfo(...) method looks:

public class TasksManager
    ...
    private TaskInfo GetTaskInfo(Type taskType)
    {
        return Config.TaskInfos[taskType];
    }

Navigator

Now let us look into how the navigation occurs. Navigator class should have a public Navigate(..) method with a navigation trigger name passed as parameter.

For a navigator to switch to another view it needs to know the task navigation structure. Therefore it should be linked to the TaskInfo instance describing that task. Such linking can be done in the TasksManager.StartTask(...) method:

public class TasksManager
...
    public ITask StartTask(Type taskType)
    {
        ...
        n.TaskInfo = ti;
        ...
    }

Task information is not the only needed component for a navigator to do the navigation. Another important thing we have introduced in the analysis phase is the views manager concept. Its responsibility is actual view switching, with different views manager implementations capable of different presentation mechanisms. The navigator will be connected to the views manager in the TasksManager.StartTask(...) method:

public class TasksManager
    ...
    public ITask StartTask(Type taskType)
    {
        ...
        IViewsManager vm = CreateHelper.Create(Config.ViewsManagerType)
                           as IViewsManager;
        n.ViewsManager = vm;
        vm.Navigator = n;
        ...
    }

Note that we are using the MVCConfiguration class to store the used views manager type.

Now we are ready to write code for the Navigator.Navigate(...) operation:

public class Navigator
{
    ...
    public TaskInfo TaskInfo
    ...
    public IViewsManager ViewsManager
    ...
    public void Navigate(string triggerName)
    {
        string nextViewName = TaskInfo.GetNextViewName(Task.CurrViewName,
                                                       triggerName);
        if (nextViewName == Task.CurrViewName) return;
        NavigateDirectly(nextViewName);
    }

    public void NavigateDirectly(string viewName)
    {
        Task.CurrViewName = viewName;
        ViewsManager.ActivateView(Task.CurrViewName);
    }
}

Designing a Simple Views Manager

Up to the moment, we have roughly designed all key classes except for a views manager class. Let us build a simple IViewsManager implementation. Although simple, it will be a basis for more complicated real-life views managers.

To make our views manager as simple as possible let us assume that views are usual Windows Forms. Then our SimpleFormsViewsManager will be responsible for switching between those Forms.

ViewInfo

In order to activate a form for the first time it needs to be created. Therefore the views manager should know the view type by its name. We will encapsulate the information about a view type in a ViewInfo class instance. Thus, given a view name, the view manager should retrieve the corresponding ViewInfo object through the intermediate ViewInfoCollection object.

public class ViewInfoCollection
    ...
    public ViewInfo this[string viewName]
    {
        get { return viewInfoCollection[viewName] as ViewInfo; }
        set { viewInfoCollection[viewName] = value; }
    }

    public class ViewInfo
    ...
    public Type ViewType

Subsequent (second, third, etc.) view activations don't require the view creation. Instead they require locating the already created view by its name. For this, the views manager should have an association to a FormCollection class returning already created views by their names.

public class SimpleFormsViewsManager : IViewsManager
    ...
    private Dictionary<string, Form> forms
            = new Dictionary<string, Form>();

The question is where a views manager takes the view descriptions (ViewInfo objects) from. As views are parts of a task it is natural to store their descriptions within that task’s description:

public class TaskInfo
    ...
    public ViewInfoCollection ViewInfos

This approach does not bind tasks to any specific presentation mechanism since the base ViewInfo class is independent of a specific presentation.

Next question is how a ViewInfoCollection gets populated. Obviously a user can modify the collection at runtime. However usually a task structure is known at design time, and a declarative syntax to describe it may apply. A good solution is to mark view types with a [View] attribute like this:

[View(typeof(Task1), “View1”)]
class Form1: Form
…

Here we declare that the TaskInfo object for Task1 should contain a ViewInfo instance pointing to the Form1 type. Of course there should be a class which will generate ViewInfo objects from such declarations. Let us assign this responsibility to a IViewInfosProvider interface with a GetFromAssembly(assembly:Assembly) operation. It will generate ViewInfo objects from the declarations in the input assembly:

public interface IViewInfosProvider
{
    ViewInfosByTaskCollection GetFromAssembly(Assembly assembly);
}
public class DefaultViewInfosProvider : IViewInfosProvider
...

ActivateView Implementation

In general the view activation mechanism is quite simple: the necessary form should be found by its name and then the Form.Show() and Form.Activate() methods should be called on it.

public class SimpleFormsViewsManager : IViewsManager
    ...
    public void ActivateView(string viewName)
    {
        Form f = FindOrCreateView(viewName);
        f.Show();
        f.Activate();
    }

The FindOrCreate operation above should create the view in case it does not exist yet. Of course a view creation implies certain initialization steps. These steps may be derived from the requirements to our system. Take a look at the “Accessing the controller from a view and vice versa” use case. It requires a view to be linked to the controller during the initialization process:

public class SimpleFormsViewsManager : IViewsManager
    ...
    private Form FindOrCreateView(string viewName)
    {
        Form result;
        if (!forms.TryGetValue(viewName, out result))
        {
            result = CreateHelper.Create(ViewInfos[viewName].ViewType) as Form;
            forms[viewName] = result;
            (result as IView).ViewName = viewName;
            InitializeView(result as IView);
        }
        return result;
    }

    private void InitializeView(IView view)
    {
        view.Controller = Navigator.GetController(view.ViewName);
        view.Controller.View = view;
    }

In this code we make the Navigator class responsible for holding the controllers for its task. Navigator will also create and initialize controllers if needed. According to the “Accessing the task and navigating from a controller” use case, a controller initialization should include its linking to the task:

public class Navigator
    ...
    public IController GetController(string viewName)
    {
        IController result = controllers[viewName] as IController;
        if (result == null)
        {
            InteractionPointInfo iPointInf = TaskInfo.InteractionPoints[viewName];
            result = CreateHelper.Create(iPointInf.ControllerType) as IController;
            result.Task = Task;
            controllers[viewName] = result;
        }
        return result;
    }

Manual View Activation

What happens when a user himself clicks on a form and activates it? That means the user decides to do the navigation to the selected view. Thus the Navigator.Navigate(…) operation should be called in response to the manual view activation. We can implement this by handling the Form.Activated event:

public class SimpleFormsViewsManager : IViewsManager
    ...
    void view_Activated(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Navigator.TryNavigateToView((sender as IView).ViewName);
    }


public class Navigator
    ...
    public void TryNavigateToView(string viewName)
    {
        if (TaskInfo.CanNavigateToView(Task.CurrViewName, viewName))
            Task.CurrViewName = viewName;
        ViewsManager.ActivateView(Task.CurrViewName);
    }

Navigator.TryNavigateToView(...) does the following: if navigation to the destination view is possible via any of the navigation tree ribs (i.e. CanNavigateToView returns true) then the destination view gets activated, otherwise the source view is activated. Thus if a user clicks on a view that is not accessible from the current one, then the task will remain in the current view and the views manager will switch back to the current view.

Summary

Throughout this article we have developed the core classes of the future MVP Framework. These classes help users in fulfilling the main Model-View-Presenter usage scenarios, and establish a firm ground for the further Framework's growth and extension.

Note that the SimpleFormsViewsManager class sources as well as examples on using MVC# Framework are bundled with MVC# sources and located in the Examples folder.

Proceed to Part 3: Designing a Windows Forms Views Engine

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