FluentChaining

A lightweight library for implementing responsibility chains in fluent style.

Prerequisites

Chain of responsibility is on OOP pattern outlined by GoF.

Avoid coupling the sender of a request to its receiver by giving more than one object a chance to handle the request. Chain the receiving objects and pass the request along the chain until an object handles it.

–– GoF

You can learn more about that pattern on refactoring.guru website.

Examples

Creating an IChain (IAsyncChain)

You can create an IChain by using FluentChaining.CreateChain<TRequest, TResponse> method or FluentChaining.CreateChain<TRequest> for chains that returns no value (Unit).

If your chain links have some dependencies to resolve, you can pass down an instance of IEnumerable<ServiceDescriptor>, or simply an IServiceCollection that contains these dependencies.

Overloads for chains with async links are available as well.

public static IChain<Name, bool> CreateChain(IServiceCollection initialServices)
{
    return FluentChaining.CreateChain<Name, bool>
    (
        initialServices,
        builder => builder
            .Then<LengthChecker>()
            .Then<DigitCountChecker>()
            .Then<SpecialSymbolsChecker>()
            .FinishWith(() => true)
    );
}

Registering an IChain (IAsyncChain) in the IServiceCollection

You can also register you chains in DI container using extension methods.

Call AddFluentChaining method on IServiceCollection to start registration and configure chain creation processes (optionally).

Configuration options

• ChainLifetime
  The lifetime which the created chains will be registered with (Scoped by default). Configuring lifetime for individual chains is not supported, yet nothing stops you from calling AddFluentChaining multiple times.
• AllowDuplicates
  If set to true, multiple chains with same (TRequest, TResponse) pair will be allowed, otherwise only the first one will be used.

The AddFluentChaining method will return IChainConfigurator instance, which has methods for adding all types of chains.

public static void AddChainsToServiceCollection(IServiceCollection collection)
{
    collection.AddFluentChaining(o =>
        {
            o.ChainLifetime = ServiceLifetime.Singleton;
            o.AllowDuplicates = false;
        })
        .AddChain<Name, bool>
        (
            start => start
                .Then<LengthChecker>()
                .Then<DigitCountChecker>()
                .Then<SpecialSymbolsChecker>()
                .FinishWith(() => true)
        )
        .AddAsyncChain<Age, bool>
        (
            start => start
                .Then<AgeChecker>()
                .FinishFromResult(() => true)
        );
}

Usage

To create a chain link, you simply need to implement an ILink interface or IAsyncLinkinterface (for async chains).

Links added in the chain support DI (as long as corresponding IServiceProvider can satisfy their dependencies).

To process a request by the chain you will need to call a Process method on the IChain or ProcessAsync on IAsyncChain instance.

ILink implementation example

public class LengthChecker : ILink<Name, bool>
{
    private readonly ValidationConfiguration _configuration;

    public LengthChecker(ValidationConfiguration configuration)
    {
        _configuration = configuration;
    }

    public bool Process(Name request, SynchronousContext context, LinkDelegate<Name, SynchronousContext, bool> next)
    {
        if (request.Value.Length < _configuration.NameLength)
            return false;

        return next.Invoke(request, context);
    }
}

IAsyncLink implementation example

public class AgeChecker : IAsyncLink<Age, bool>
{
    private readonly ValidationConfiguration _configuration;

    public AgeChecker(ValidationConfiguration configuration)
    {
        _configuration = configuration;
    }

    public Task<bool> Process(Age request, AsynchronousContext context, LinkDelegate<Age, AsynchronousContext, Task<bool>> next)
    {
        if (request.Value < _configuration.Age || context.CancellationToken.IsCancellationRequested)
            return Task.FromResult(false);

        return next.Invoke(request, context);
    }
}

Chain processing example

 public static bool Validate(User user, IServiceProvider provider)
{
    var nameValidator = provider.GetRequiredService<IChain<Name, bool>>();
    var ageValidator = provider.GetRequiredService<IAsyncChain<Age, bool>>();

    return nameValidator.Process(user.Name) && ageValidator.ProcessAsync(user.Age).Result;
}

Utilising assembly scanning

Configuring links manually is definitely is a more reliable and stable approach. On the other hand it is more verbose, so for the sake of automation, or in case the link order is not important, you can use assembly scanning.

To add links from selected assemblies call ThenFromAssemblies method on your ILinkBuilder<,,> instance. It receives AssemblyProviders as params, it will implicitly convert instances of Type and Assembly objects, courtesy of FluentScanning.

If you want to have an ease of automation that assembly scanning offers, and still have some control over the order of links in chain, you can use LinkPriorityAttribute. Links will be sorted in descending order by their priority (the higher the priority, the earlier the link will be added), with priority 0 for ones without LinkPriorityAttribute.

Assembly scanning example

.AddChain<Name, bool>
(
    start => start
        .ThenFromAssemblies(typeof(Scenario))
        .FinishWith(() => true)
)

LinkPriorityAttribute example

[LinkPriority(int.MaxValue)]
public class LengthChecker : ILink<Name, bool>
{
    ...
}