Terry Thibodeau's Blog

How Did I Get Started In Software Development?

2008-07-15T14:22:00Z

Called out by Sean Feldman . Here we go: How old were you when you first started in programming? Not counting Turtle, I think the first actual program I wrote was a MadLibs story generator in grade 7. I would have been 12 or 13. It's no Pong , but there you go. How did you get started in programming? I took an interest in computers with the very first one I saw in 1981 (grade 1, an Apple computer). From that point, I loved computers and always gravitated to technology in some way. I continued using...(read more)

ALT.NET Canada Conference - time's running out

2008-07-02T20:45:00Z

As one of the organizers of the ALT.NET Canada conference, I thought I should probably do the obligatory "Come on out" post.:) So, if you haven't heard already, we are holding the first ever ALT.NET Canada Conference in Calgary, Alberta from August 15-17, 2008 ! Space is limited to the first 100 applicants, so sign up now ! You can read much more eloquent posts about the conference at the following fellow-organizer blogs: Donald Belcham Kyle Baley James Kovacs See you there!...(read more)

Consolidating and Version-controlling Development Settings

2008-05-06T18:45:00Z

Those who know me know that I hate repetition. Reducing duplication and improving productivity is usually the driving force behind much that I do with computers (other than my day job of software development). After installing Visual Studio 2008 and new versions of Resharper, I realized that I was, once again, going to have to reset all of my preferences. Tired of dealing with this, I set on a mission to formulate a process to consolidate my Visual Studio, Macro, Resharper, and any other add-on settings...(read more)

The miracle hair!

2008-05-05T19:04:00Z

Since Justice appreciates my hair so much (see the last interview question), I thought I'd give the rest of the public a taste as well. Enjoy ;)...(read more)

Testing NHibernate object mappings in isolation (Part 2 - dependencies)

2008-02-25T19:58:00Z

I thought I should post an update to "Testing NHibernate object mappings in isolation" as that post didn't address dependent objects in your mapping files. For a simple mapping to a class with only fields or component object references*, the previous method works fine.

When you start adding references to other entities in your mapping files, you must also add those mapping file references to the Configuration object. I've refactored the code from the previous post to load the mapping file resource based on the class type. Notice the test, "Should_map_Conference_class", adds its dependencies to the configuration.

private const string mappingFileAssemblyName = "Namespace.NHibernateMappings";

private readonly string customConfigPath = Path.Combine(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory(), @"localNHibernate.cfg.xml");

private Configuration configuration;

[SetUp]

public void TestInitialize()

{

configuration = new Configuration()

.Configure(customConfigPath);

}

[TearDown]

public void TearDown()

{

this.configuration.BuildSessionFactory().Close();

}

[Test]

public void Should_map_Conference_class()

{

AddSingleClass(typeof (Address));

AddSingleClass(typeof (Category));

AddSingleClass(typeof(Conference));

}

private Configuration AddSingleClass(Type persistentClassType)

{

Assembly assembly = Assembly.Load(mappingFileAssemblyName);

return this.configuration.AddResource(mappingFileAssemblyName + "." + persistentClassType.Name + ".hbm.xml", assembly);

}

If I were using C# 3.0 on this project, I could create an extension method for the NHibernate Configuration class to allow me to do something like:

configuration.AddSingleClass(typeof (Address), assembly)

.AddSingleClass(typeof(Category), assembly)

.AddSingleClass(typeof(Conference), assembly);

* - A component is a contained object that is persisted as a value type, not an entity. See Component Mapping in the NHibernate documentation.