Putting it all together: ASP.NET MVC, SQLite, NHibernate, Fluent NHibernate & Log4Net

Today, I will explain how to set up a ASP.NET MVC project, which is using NHibernate for accessing a SQLite Database and Fluent NHibernate for configuring NHibernate. In this post I will give you a general overview about the structure of the project and in my future posts I will explain more in detail single its parts.

The sample project which can be downloaded from the following link http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36200417/MvcNhibernate.zip was setup as explained below.

The project is divided in two subprojects:
a)    MVC Web application
b)    DAL (Data Access Layer)

In a real project I would have more layers and subprojects, but for this example I want to keep it simple and therefore I removed the business layer.

First I was referencing all needed dlls:
- fluentnhibernate-NH3.0-binary-1.2.0.694
- log4net
- NHibernate-3.0.0.GA-bin
- SQLite-1.0.66.0-binaries

Afterwards I was generating a Database with the following command:sqlite3 test.db.

Copying the test.db file to the App_Data folder and adding the following connection string allows Asp.Net to access the SqLite Database.

<connectionStrings>
  <add name="SqLiteCon" connectionString="data source=|DataDirectory|test.db;" />
</connectionStrings>

Let’s now investigate on the structure of the project:

Project DAL:
/DAO: Data Access Objects provide abstract interfaces to a persistence medium like a database
/DAO/Interface: Interfaces for DAOs
/DAO/Implementation: Concrete implementation that provides access to the database with NHibernate. Note: BasicNhDAO<T, EntityKey> is a base class that provides basic functions (=CRUD). For every entity a DAO object exists, that is responsible for persisting the entity.
/Entities: Plain objects for encapsulating data.
/Entities/Interface: Interfaces for the plain objects
/Entities/Implementation:
/Mapping: FluentNHibernate Mappings, which are containing information how to map entities to tables of a database.
/SessionStorage: small framework for managing the NHibernate Session.

Project MvcNhibernate:
/App_Data: contains the SqLite database file
/Controllers: MVC Controllers. SqLiteController contains the logic for this example.
/Views/SqLite: MVC Views that are interesting for this example.

Log4Net: esempio di configurazione

Un piccolo suggerimento per chi di voi utilizza Log4Net (http://logging.apache.org/log4net/index.html) ma utile: Invece di utilizzare log4net.Appender.FileAppender sarebbe consigliato l’utilizzo di log4net.Appender.RollingFileAppender, che vi da decisivamente più funzionalità per esempio potete impostare la grandezza massima del file di log o anche potete specificare che il file venga rinominato con un “date pattern”.

Ecco un esempio di configurazione:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
    <configSections>
        <section name="log4net" type="log4net.Config.Log4NetConfigurationSectionHandler, log4net" />
    </configSections>
    <log4net debug="false">
        <appender name="RollingLogFileAppender" type="log4net.Appender.RollingFileAppender, log4net">
            <file value="C:\xxx\xxx_Log4Net" />
            <appendToFile value="true" />
            <rollingStyle value="Composite" />
            <datePattern value=".yyyyMM'.log'" />
            <maxSizeRollBackups value="-1" />
            <maximumFileSize value="50MB" />
            <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout, log4net">
                <conversionPattern value="%d [%t] %-5p %c - %m%n" />
            </layout>
        </appender>
        <root>
            <priority value="ALL" />
            <appender-ref ref="RollingLogFileAppender" />
        </root>
    </log4net>
</configuration>

Qualche note:

Impostando la proprietà RollingStyle uguale a Composite istruisco a Log4Net che il file corrente si chiami xxx_Log4Net e i file successivi vengano denominati con il seguente pattern .yyyyMM'.log' (yy sta per anno e MM sta per mese). Per essere più esatti passato un mese il file corrente xxx_Log4Net verrà rinominato a xxx_Log4Net.yyyy.MM.log. Inoltre se il file supera la grandezza di 50Mb verrà creato un nuovo file con il nome xxx_Log4Net.1.