Unity: Details Optional – Rx: Documentation Optional A first chance exception of type ‘Microsoft.Practices.Unity.ResolutionFailedException’ occurred in Microsoft.Practices.Unity.dll A first chance exception of type ‘Microsoft.Practices.Composite.Presentation.Regions.Behaviors.RegionCreationException’ occurred in Microsoft.Practices.Composite.Presentation.dll I love, but I’d like a little more than this information when resolution fails. I thought I knew the missing interface mapping, but I was wrong. Now I’m on to “break on all exceptions” as a fix. I’m sure deep in the bowels of the Unity code, the exact type/interface failures are known, somebody dropped the ball not putting it in the message – I just don’t have time right now to open up the code and fix it, so I think I’ll just complain. While I’m on the subject of complaints, the library has some truly awesome features and astonishingly completely absent documentation.
In the world of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) or Silverlight, Prism is a set of assets that helps you build modular enterprise applications. Often, these applications contain rich user interfaces and evolve over time as business requirements evolve. Prism can improve your ability to deliver consistent, maintainable, and industry-standard software. Here are 7 things you absolutely need to know about Prism before venturing into your first Prism project. Prism has had different product names Prism was an early “code name” for the Composite Application Library (CAL), but then it was renamed to Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight. That’s a mouthful. Now it’s renamed again to Prism, probably for the better.
Prism is on CodePlex You can obtain Prism from CodePlex. Earlier versions of Prism required you to download files from both CodePlex and MSDN, but thankfully it is simpler now. You can download all the requisite libraries, source code, and documentation from the CodePlex site above. Adobe edge preloader immediate polite. Prism has many assets Prism is a collection of library source code (that can be modified or extended if needed), signed binaries, extensions to the Unity Application Block and Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF), reference implementations, quick starts, and documentation.
The CodePlex site also offers additional material in the form of blogs, knowledge base, and known issues. Finally, many industry professionals, including Intertech Consultants, have written articles, blogs, white papers, and sample programs to help you learn the various aspects of Prism. Prism has multiple versions The current production version of Prism is 2.2, which was released in May 2010. The next release of Prism is 4.0, which is currently in Beta (drop 10).
Both versions (and earlier releases also) can be downloaded from the link provided above. There is no Prism version 3.x. If you’re looking to build and release a new Prism WPF (or Silverlight) application soon, then Prism 2.2 is the better choice given its stable status. Prism 4.0 is planned for industry release in the Fall of 2010, meaning it may be your better option if you’re planning or soon beginning a new Prism WPF project. Both of these versions target either WPF or Silverlight applications developed with Visual Studio 2010 using.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 or 4.0 as the baseline framework. If your project doesn’t align with those requirements, then an earlier version of Prism is probably a better choice. Prism provides choices Prism has many great pieces of functionality, but you don’t need to use all of them.
It’s like the people you friend on Facebook, or the food you eat from a buffet, you get to choose what pieces of Prism are appropriate for your application. If you like the concept of user interface composition but nothing else, that’s fine – use that only. If you don’t want to leverage any Prism functionality except the Event Aggregator, go for it. You choose what’s right for each project. From an architectural perspective, Prism provides the following options. Multi-targeting – this provides ability to use the same code base to deploy as either a WPF or Silverlight application 6. Prism employs patterns Most enterprise applications initially require or evolve to a point where common patterns are employed to provide application maintainability, performance, decoupling, etc.
Prism applications also employ patterns, many of which are supported directly in the Prism libraries or reference implementations. Some of the key patterns you should know/learn include:. Service Locator 7. Upgrading Prism 2.x applications to Prism 4.0 is not seamless Prism 4.0 changed and deleted some namespace and assembly names, meaning you’ll need to adjust your Prism library references accordingly.
Here’s a brief summary of changes (realizing that 4.0 is not yet final release and this info could change). Microsoft.Practices.Composite namespace changed to Microsoft.Practices.Prism across all assemblies Composite.Presentation namespace deleted and its classes moved to Microsoft.Practices.Prism namespace Prism 4.0 added a new XAML XmlnsDefinition of.
Although the existing XmlnsDefinition of still exists, it is recommended that the new one be used. We’re assuming that the existing definition will eventually be deleted permanently. The bootstrapper is enhanced in Prism 4.0 to better enable use of Unity or MEF. If you are using the UnityBootstrapper class, it is now derived from a new Bootstrapper base class in the Microsoft.Practices.Prism assembly. Additionally, some property names and method names were changed. Here’s a brief summary of changes (realizing that 4.0 is not yet final release and this info could change). LoggerFacade property renamed to Logger GetModuleCatalog method renamed to CreateModuleCatalog ConfigureModuleCatalog was added ConfigureServiceLocator was added There are other library changes affecting the module catalog, regions, and event aggregator that may impact your effort required to upgrade a Prism 2.x application to 4.0.
The Prism 4.0 release documentation and API reference would be good starting points for more information. It can be a little daunting to get started on a Prism application. Start small, know your requirements, and preferably do a prototype to get your feet wet with the technology.
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Creating Modularity with WPF, Prism and Unity If you're building Windows Presentation Foundation applications that will change over time or have some combination of complex workflows, rich user interaction, and significant presentation or business logic, Microsoft recommends that you add Prism and Unity to your toolkit. That's good advice. By. There's a better set of tools than using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) straight out of the box: WPF plus Prism (formerly 'Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight') and Unity.
Prism focuses on letting you turn your XAML file into a true view, supported by a completely separate ViewModel class. Because your XAML view is built declaratively, you might have blunders in it (incorrect property settings, for instance), but you can't have logic errors. Instead, your bugs are limited to your procedural code (the validation code, the integration with your business objects, workflow management and so on), which is segregated into your ViewModel class. That ViewModel class can be developed in parallel to your view and, more importantly, built using test-driven development (TDD) to ensure it works correctly. Once your view model is built, it just needs to be wired up to your XAML to create your application.
Unity focuses on giving you runtime flexibility in that 'wiring up' phase by providing the ability to create composable applications - applications that choose their parts at runtime. Instead of hardcoding class names into your code, you specify the criteria for the classes you want to use. At runtime, your application looks for the class it needs and loads it. This gives you an easier way to swap in and out your views and view models from one site to another, from one scenario to another (premium customers versus ordinary customers) or from one state to another (test versus production; supporting a customer in default versus supporting a customer in good standing).
Applications determine the criteria for the components they need by reading a configuration file or by making decisions based on information in the environment. It's a different way of thinking: Using Prism and Unity with WPF is as much about adopting a way of creating your applications as it is about adopting new technology. And while I'm focusing on WPF in this article, Prism and Unity work equally well with Silverlight, throwing in the ability to dynamically search for the classes to download to the client as a bonus. The easiest way to get the Prism/Unity combo is to use the Extensions Manager on the Visual Studio Tools menu to search for and install the NuGet Package Manager. Once you have NuGet installed, you can right-click on your project and select Manage NuGet Packages. A search in the online forums on Prism will bring you to the Prism.UnityExtensions package, which you can download and install into your project.
You are correct. Pre v4, Prism's dlls included Microsoft.Practices.Composite.dll but, as of v4, this has been rolled into Microsoft.Practices.Prism.dll along with some other functionality. The documented list of changes is this:. The Composite Application Library was renamed to the Prism Library. The Composite and Composite.Presentation portions of the namespaces were removed and the Composite and Composite.Presentation assemblies collapsed into a single assembly named Microsoft.Practices.Prism.
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The Microsoft.Practices.Prism libraries for Silverlight and WPF now register the Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Regions, Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Commands, and Microsoft.Practices.Prism.ViewModel namespaces with the xmlns definition. Several reusable user interface (UI)–based behaviors were extracted into the Prism.Interactivity assembly, including the interaction request behavior. You can now use MEF as the dependency injection container. This functionality required two new projects in the Prism Library solutions: Prism.MefExtensions.Desktop and Prism.MefExtensions.Silverlight. These projects create a new assembly, Microsoft.Practices.Prism.MefExtensions.dll, in the respective Desktop and Silverlight folders. Also included in the solutions are new unit test projects for the new functionality.