How do I call my own service from a request/response filter in ServiceStack? - servicestack

Question

My problem is...
...I have a DTO like this
[Route("/route/to/dto/{Id}", "GET")]
public class Foo : IReturn<Bar>
{
public string Id { get; set; }
}
and need to call the service that implements the method with this signature
public Bar Get(Foo)
from a request and/or response filter. I don't know what class implements it (don't want to need to know). What I need is something like the LocalServiceClient class in the example below:
var client = new LocalServiceClient();
Bar bar = client.Get(new Foo());
Does this LocalServiceClient thing exists? JsonServiceClient has a pretty similar interface, but using it would be inneficient (I need to call my own service, I shouldn't need an extra round-trip, even to localhost, just to do this).
I'm aware of ResolveService method from Service class, but it requires me to have a service instance and to know what class will handle the request.
I think this LocalServiceClient is possible because I have all the data that a remote client (e.g. JsonServiceClient) needs to call the service - request DTO, route, verb - but couldn't find how to do it. Actually, it should be easier to implement than JsonServiceClient.
JsonServiceClient would do it, but there must be a better way, using the same request context.
What I want to do (skip this if you're not curious about why I'm doing this)
Actually, my DTOs are like this:
[EmbedRequestedLinks]
[Route("/route/to/dto/{Id}", "GET")]
public class MyResponseDto
{
public string Id { get; set; }
public EmbeddableLink<AResponseDto> RelatedResource { get; set; }
public EmbeddableLink<AnotherResponteDto> AnotherRelatedResource { get; set; }
}
EmbedRequestedLinksAttribute is a request/response filter. This filter checks if there is a query argument named "embed" in the request. If so, the filter need to "embed" the comma-separated related resources referenced by the argument into the response to this request. EmbeddableLink<T> instances can be obtained by using extension methods like these:
1) public static EmbeddableLink<T> ToEmbeddableLink<T>(this IReturn<T> requestDto)
2) public static EmbeddableLink<T> ToEmbeddableLink<T>(this T resource)
Assume a client places this request:
GET /route/to/dto/123456?embed=relatedResource HTTP/1.1
The service that will handle this request will return an instance of MyResponseDto with EmbeddableLinks created using signature (1). Then my response filter will see the embed query argument and will call the Get method of the appropriate service, replacing the RelatedResource with another instance of EmbeddableLink, this time created using extension method (2):
var client = new LocalServiceClient();
response.RelatedResource = client.Get(response.RelatedResource.RequestDto)
.ToEmbeddableLink();
The serialization routine of EmbeddableLink takes care of the rest.
In case an embeddable link is not included in the embed list the serialization routine will call the extension method ToUrl (provided by ServiceStack), that takes a verb and converts a request DTO into a URL. In this example the client will get this response:
{
"id": "9asc09dcd80a98",
"relatedResource": { "id": "ioijo0909801", ... },
"anotherRelatedResource":
{
"$link": { "href": "/route/to/another/dto/1sdf89879s" }
}
}
I know the creators of ServiceStack think that polymorphic request/responses are bad things but this case seems OK to me because I'm not creating services, instead I'm extending the framework to help me create services the way I (and possibly other users of ServiceStack) need. I'm also creating other hypermedia extensions to ServiceStack. (I hope my boss allow me to publish these extensions on github)

Answer 1

If you really want to do this then look the source code for ServiceStack. Look at the ServiceManager and ServiceController. These classes are responsible for registering and resolving services. You might even be able to use reflection to create services on the fly with the static EndpointHost.Metadata like so:
var operation = EndpointHost.Metadata.Operations
.FirstOrDefault(x => x.RequestType == typeof(Person));
if (operation != null)
{
var svc = Activator.CreateInstance(operation.ServiceType);
var method = operation.ServiceType.GetMethod("Get");
var response = method.Invoke(svc, new[] { new Person() });
}
This kinda works but you will get NULL exceptions if there is other code calling
var httpRequest = RequestContext.Get<IHttpRequest>();
But I would not suggest this.
Instead if you create your own Business Service classes that do all the CRUD operations (POST/PUT/GET ect). Then make the ServiceStack Services thin wrappers over them. Now you can call your own services whenever you want without worrying about the HTTP Request and ServiceStack. Only use the ServiceStack Service when you are dealing with HTTP requests

Answer 2

You can call the static AppHostBase.Resolve() method as demonstrated here, calling a SeviceStack Service from an MVC controller:
var helloService = AppHostBase.Resolve<HelloService>();
helloService.RequestContext = System.Web.HttpContext.Current.ToRequestContext();
var response = (HelloResponse)helloService.Any(new HelloRequest { Name = User.Identity.Name });
However, I would take #kampsj's approach of making your ServiceStack services a thin wrapper around your application service classes and only deal with HTTP/Session specific stuff in the ServiceStack service.