Make IDbContextFactory implementation disposable

[Shique]

Hi, I have a proposal for the way this library implements IDbContextFactory.

Currently, I believe this is the implementation: Specification.EntityFrameworkCore/src/Ardalis.Specification.EntityFrameworkCore/ContextFactoryRepositoryBaseOfT.cs

I'm forced to use this pattern due to Blazor's Interactive Server-side scope problems.
The current way, I believe is not the best as in a mediator handler, you may have multiple db operations, so you want to keep the db context open throughout the lifetime of the handler, rather than only for singular db operations and make use of .SaveChanges().

My proposal is something akin to having a factory which contains the IDbContextFactory and has a function .CreateIRepository(), similar to .CreateDbContext().
Example would be ...

public class RepositoryFactory : IRepositoryFactory
{
  private IDbContextFactory _dbContextFactory;

  public RepositoryFactory(IDbContextFactory dbContextFactory)
  {
    _dbContextFactory = dbContextFactory;
  }

  public Task IRepository CreateRepository()
  {
       return Task.FromResult(new IRepository(_dbContextFactory.CreateRepository()));
  }
  
  public void Dispose()
  {
    ...
  }
}

public class MyHandler(IRepositoryFactory repFactory)
{
  public void Handle()
  {
    using IRepository<MyContext> repository = await IRepositoryFactory.CreateRepository(); 
    ...
  }
}

It's not a fully fleshed out idea, but I was wondering if you think that's possible and would be open to it?

[fiseni]

Hi @Shique,

The core functionalities of this library are specifications and evaluators. We're providing the repository implementations just as a sample. The mentioned factory implementation was a community contribution, and frankly, I wish we didn't include it in the package. There are so many variations of repo implementations, and keeping everyone happy is just not feasible.

I'd strongly urge you to have your custom repo implementation tailored to your needs (that's what I personally do). The role of this library is just to evaluate the specification, as shown below.

var query = SpecificationEvaluator.Default.GetQuery(_dbContext.Set<T>(), specification);

@ardalis had some thoughts about extracting the repository implementations to a separate package.

[ardalis]

Yeah I'm not keen to keep adding to the repository implementation(s) that again were mostly only included to demonstrate example usage. In hindsight they probably should only have been in the repo in a samples folder or docs, not in the package itself. Feel free to take the code and adapt it to suit your needs, in your own codebase.