c# - Loading Subrecords in the Repository Pattern

Question

Using LINQ TO SQL as the underpinning of a Repository-based solution. My implementation is as follows:

IRepository

FindAll
FindByID
Insert
Update
Delete

Then I have extension methods that are used to query the results as such:

WhereSomethingEqualsTrue() ...

My question is as follows:

My Users repository has N roles. Do I create a Roles repository to manage Roles? I worry I'll end up creating dozens of Repositories (1 per table almost except for Join tables) if I go this route. Is a Repository per Table common?

Answer 1

If you are building your Repository to be specific to one Entity (table), such that each Entity has the list of methods in your IRepository interface that you listed above, then what you are really doing is an implementation of the Active Record pattern.

You should definitely not have one Repository per table. You need to identify the Aggregates in your domain model, and the operations that you want to perform on them. Users and Roles are usually tightly related, and generally your application would be performing operations with them in tandem - this calls for a single repository, centered around the User and it's set of closely related entities.

I'm guessing from your post that you've seen this example. The problem with this example is that all the repositories are sharing the same CRUD functionality at the base level, but he doesn't go beyond this and implement any of the domain functions. All the repositories in that example look the same - but in reality, real repositories don't all look the same (although they should still be interfaced), there will be specific domain operations associated with each one.

Your repository domain operations should look more like:

userRepository.FindRolesByUserId(int userID)
userRepository.AddUserToRole(int userID)
userRepository.FindAllUsers()
userRepository.FindAllRoles()
userRepository.GetUserSettings(int userID)

etc...

These are specific operations that your application wants to perform on the underlying data, and the Repository should provide that. Think of it as the Repository represents the set of atomic operations that you would perform on the domain. If you choose to share some functionality through a generic repository, and extend specific repositories with extension methods, that's one approach that may work just fine for your app.

A good rule of thumb is that it should be rare for your application to need to instantiate multiple repositories to complete an operation. The need does arise, but if every event handler in your app is juggling six repositories just to take the user's input and correctly instantiate the entities that the input represents, then you probably have design problems.