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From YouTube: The Architecture behind the nopCommerce eCommerce Platform

Description

https://aka.ms/On.NET-NopCommerce

nopCommerce
https://www.nopcommerce.com/

nopCommerce GitHub repository
https://github.com/nopSolutions/nopCommerce

Getting started with ASP.NET Core
https://docs.microsoft.com/aspnet/core/getting-started/?view=aspnetcore-3.0&tabs=macos&WT.mc_id=ondotnet-c9-cephilli
nopCommerce is a mature eCommerce platform build on ASP.NET Core. Originally, it was built on Web Forms and over the years it moved to Mvc and now too ASP.NET Core.

In this episode, John Baluka joins Christos to give us an interesting look at the architecture of nopCommerce. They dive into topics such as validation, dependency injection, object mapping, data access and much more.

[00:37] - What is nopCommerce?
[04:05] - What's nopCommerce built on?
[07:12] - Exploring the architecture
[15:19] - Preparing for .NET Core
[18:00] - Exploring the business logic components
[26:25] - Data access with Entity Framework Core
[35:30] - Reviewing the Plugins and themes

Get your questions answered on the Microsoft Q&A for .NET - http://aka.ms/dotnet-qa
Learn .NET with free self-guided learning from Microsoft Learn: http://aka.ms/learndotnet

A

On.Net today, we're going to be talking about e-commerce, with.net core.

A

yeah,. That's the thing. join me and john, define about nopcommerce.

A

Welcome to another show of on.net.

A

today,, I am with john [inaudible] , donnelly developer.

A

We're going to be talking about .net e-commerce, with nopcommerce. right.

A

Yes. well, thanks for coming today, john.

B

Oh, thank you. came all the way from st. louis.

A

Well,, that's a hell of a trick.

B

A

Tell us about a nopcommerce and how did you get involved with that.

B

Sure. well, nopcommerce is a asp.net core.

B

Open-Source solution that is truly free in open-source, unlike a lot of other solutions out there.

B

I got interested in nopcommerce more as I was looking for.

B

An enterprise level architecture that was in the microsoft stack that I can plug and play technologies. With.

B

So I wanted something that I wanted to use for training purposes and I didn't want to have to base my work on a "hello, world" type, example.

B

right.. I wanted a true enterprise application.

B

That's used by millions of people, and it would be a great test bed to interchange technologies within that tech, stack.

B

fantastic., it's a weird name.. Do you know how?.

B

Nopcommerce? yeah. well,. I guess if you search enough you'll find the answer., but the answer is actually in a blog post that I saw that andre,, the creator of nopcommerce, kind of responded to someone's question..

B

He basically responded simply,, it's three letters.

B

in other words,. I think he was just looking for something that had three letters., then of course, the jokes kind of went on from there to where it was not only paypal, and there's also some really technical term for nop.

B

I think my favorite is not our problem,, since it's open-source.

B

Yeah., so I think.

B

Andres reason for that was like you: can call it whatever you want.

B

You find a lot of companies based around nopcommerce, using.

B

That same little, prefix of nop, templates, nopadvance.

B

So a lot of companies around nopcommerce kind of use that three-letter in front of their name.

B

Interesting. so tell us a little bit about it.

A

How do I get started with a nopcommerce if I were to spin up my own version of it?.

B

Sure., so I prepared a few things. I'm going to jump into that,. Then we will navigate the site and look at github a little and some code.

B

perfect., I'm just going to fire this up. yep. so,. What is nopcommerce?? I've been giving this presentation around the country to get the word out more about nopcommerce at various.net meetups.

B

Because it is an architecture that is.

B

This very strong example what a .net developers should be looking at from the front-end,.

B

Business logic and mid-tier, and at the database level, and work within entity framework., so nopcommerce itself, when it comes to being.

B

A shopping cart. It also has features in there like a blogging platform..

B

It does well when it comes like a seo engines and things like that,, you do multiple store., so I think that the features themselves are on par with many other storefronts that you find out there., but it's in the.net developer stack, which is very appealing to us.net developers..

B

When you fired it, up, the store front, itself, the example,, it looks pretty appealing out of the box.

B

It's even responsive. so on a mobile device,, you just shrink it down,. It looks pretty decent. yeah., even on the admin side, for where you're managing a lot of different pieces,.

B

That's also responsive as well., so I don't know if too many people are actually managing products when on their mobile device,, they might be,, but their site itself on the mobile site is pretty decent even for the admin site.

B

very nice., so it has everything.

A

It has a front end to allow you to spin up the platform..

A

It has a comprehensive back end, to allow you to manage the platform end to end.

B

Right. then, we'll even look at some plug-ins later on too and how you extend it.

A

Yeah., because no ecosystem is good, if you don't have plugins to work with., although you can write your own,, I suppose, and we'll look into that later. On, right?.

B

Right. exactly. we'll touch on some examples., so this is the stack, really. What makes a nopcommerce.

B

Matter of fact,, this is a tat outdated because it is a.net core now,.

A

Compiling on the 2.2.

B

Uses any framework core., it's still uses a jquery and the razor view engine on the front. End,, so it'll be interesting. Where nop goes from here., are they going to adopt angular, react, view?, it's kind of up in the air.

B

but of course,? That's why it's open-source., that's why they had github and they have forums for people to share their opinions.

B

I have found that most or many people that really want,.

B

Let say angular, they'll probably do a custom template anyway.

B

Right. so they're just going to use angular in their custom template if they really want to use that tech stack..

B

So in a way, it's nice that nopcommerce is generic on the front end..

B

It's not opinionated.

A

It's not opinionated., you use your own technology. yes. autofac is used for its container.

B

There's also fluentvalidation. we'll touch on some of these as well. Throughout the architecture.

A

So from looking at this,, it looks like a very comprehensive kind of a stock and touches all the layers of.

A

Development from the front end to the.

A

Famous like autofac and automapper, which are very well-established, to the backend, which is sql server, and I suppose you can run it on azure..

A

That's the ideal. Scenario, right?.

B

Yes., it's actually a great code base, even just to learn more about automapper.

A

Fluentvalidation,, which is another open-source library that it.

B

Uses entity framework in autofac,, it's a great repository to understand those better.

B

So we'll walk through the application front end and the business layer and the data access layer for this.

B

sure. yeah.. So the solution itself is actually pretty clean..

B

Your nop up web is your storefront,.

B

And then you have a common framework there, and your libraries are pretty straightforward.. I have some test around the architecture as well,, which is great.

B

Then,, there's plugins that come with the solution out of the box.

B

It's great that they don't have everything in there..

B

They don't try to have everything in there, because, obviously, things change a lot..

B

There is a process on how you would install a plug-in and work with that., but they give you enough plug-ins to get started on the different kinds of plugins that you want to create., so payment-type plugins,, shipping, plugins, and we'll take a closer look at one or two of these a little later.

B

awesome.. So first,. I guess we'll come looking at the splash of technologies and maybe keep those in the back of our mind as we walk through the architecture. Itself.

B

Yeah., so the architecture is pretty clean..

B

I don't want to make it sound like it's, this clean., so nop.core, everything points at core.

B

When it comes to the nop.data,, it's really referring to just the sql server-type connectivity.

B

So like file access,, even redis, is part of this.

A

A lot of that codes with the nop.core.

B

So I guess my point on this is that the architecture is probably one of the cleanest architectures I've seen,. But it's not like perfect. sure. everybody's got an opinion. yeah., but this one's pretty doggone good.

B

excellent., all right.. So I'm going to fly forward through some slides here.

A

So we're going to go through.

B

Nop.Web.Framework a little bit closer.

B

the store front itself when you fire it up,.

B

This is what you would get out. however,, the first time that you fire it up, nop.web,, you actually get an installation page of. Where do you want to put the database. right.? So the barrier of entry of work we adopt is pretty easy.

B

Yes., outside of going the barrier of downloading the source, code, and I'll share some tips on that later,.

B

Just compiling it, running it.

B

What do you do? Next?? You need to know where the data is going to be.. It steps you through that process if it cannot find the settings.

B

Okay.\. so yeah, it'll put the settings. a little bit of an article location in the earlier versions in this settings file..

B

The reason I highlight this is because anything that seems a little odd about this solution that you may not find in another solution,. I try to highlight that..

B

So I see there is a setting called txt,.

A

And I suppose that the sql server settings will end up in there.

B

They are in there,, yes. they're, underneath app data, which is fortunately secured by default when you do an install.

B

so still in clean.,.

A

Yeah. there's better ways to do it, I agree. yes.

B

I agree. through requests.

A

Yeah,, I agree. I'm surprise how most of the committee.

B

Is comfortable with how appdata itself is secured to a point.

B

Are they focused on the security around appdata? yeah., there's always space for improvement, right?

B

yes.. So when it comes to finding the connection setting nowadays for nop app up,, they put it in a different location.. So some things that you move around.

B

So like, if you're going to jump into an architecture,.

B

You might think you want to jump into the homepage first., so typically,. The homepage is broke up in these different sections, and it's not a bad place to start.

B

however,. We go to the code behind, and it's not really telling me much about this architecture and what it's doing..

B

So I thought I'd start with a really drop-dead easy page,.

B

Basic phase or registration, page. sure., so looking at this example moving forward,, you would look at okay.. The way I go. Look at an mvc architecture is I'll. Go to the controller first..

B

So here we have the out of the register. Actual result.

B

What we have here is that it's returning the view which the model is instantiated with inside of it., so the main thing I'm really trying to point out in this example is there's nothing crazy, here.

B

yeah., it's just your normal mvc architecture., but then you're going to see where there's some aspects. Of,.

B

I guess you'd say decorated around this., so one of those,. If we look at the model for that last name,.

B

We had this nopresourcedisplayname. That is really this p-value.

B

So out of the box,, it's multilingual.

B

in other words,, it handles multi-localization.

B

So out of the box,, you basically have multiple resource files per the language, and the standard throughout the whole application is to.

B

Use a key rather than putting in some direct texts, so tight.

A

Right. fantastic.

B

It's a really good example of just putting that in your architecture.

B

now,, like in the same example of this last name.,.

B

So we highlight just this piece.

B

we see we have some common aspects here, like what you would find an interview.

B

But here, we have those nop-required., so what's cool within the 4.0 version,.

B

4.2 now is the current version., but when they're preparing craze for.net core and using these tag helpers,, they implemented a pretty neat way..

B

So this is an example, where nop-required was implemented as a custom tag. Helper,.

B

And that's tied to this particular key value that we have here and way that highlights, because that's what binds it to there.

B

then down below, do get that little red asterisk on the screen,.

B

We had a little bit of code that puts it better., so I found nop as just a great reference architecture.

B

You might see where this is leading to the great store front. If you have a need for e-commerce.

B

But if you're just said, .net developer wanting to learn good architecture,, this is the solution that dig into. brilliant.. So we go on from here to where it also in.

B

The front and they use this open-source library for that validation, that jeremy skinner has created, and the programming style and most.

B

Of the solution has this fluent feel about it.

B

Right. so probably,, we will look at some example code here on the fluent validation and how this really works., so by using that particular fluentvalidation.attributes,.

B

We have this attribute around our model, in which we have.

B

This register validator class that we're going to look at a little bit closer and how it binds those two together.

B

So normally, you're putting your validation on your model..

B

It has attributes throughout. you're going to find that in every hello world, example,.

B

This is a little different., meaning that,. When we look at this validator little bit, closer,.

B

We see is its own class and that wind down here that I have highlighted might be hard to see, but that is the line. That's doing the validation of returning the message that the last name is required.

B

right.. So it's centralizes in a way that might be good, might be bad.

B

But what I like the most about this programming pattern that was new to me, is that this register validator class is something that you can inject data into.

B

right. therefore,. It can be testable., yes., yes.,.

A

That's what's really valuable about.

B

Pursuing this pattern, a little bit closer.

A

I liked it also uses localization as well., so the error message will be in the right language, which is fantastic through out there.

B

Exactly, and I'm afraid that you can test for that., you could definitely test for these pieces.

B

nice.. So then we have the admin piece., I'm probably going to jump into the business logic here, shortly.

B

actually,, the admin is not its own project anymore..

B

It always has been part of the deployment of the storefront.

B

In the 3.9 version earlier,, it was its own project..

B

I left this screenshot and they're just done, highlighted.

B

It is really as its own code base..

B

I find this to be a really good architecture to look as a.net developer, because this is the application that most of us are actually programming in the real world.

A

Yeah. line of business applications.

B

Yes. so yeah,, I find this to be a good place to start and for maybe finding some coding patterns for that purpose..

B

The navigation is very common. Here, search, you have the grid here.

B

for the grid itself,. I now use datatables, datatables.net.

B

They actually just switched over to this open source library and version 4.2,.

B

The current version, this year. previously,. They were using a kendo ui for a lot of this.

B

I've worked with both, the challenge.

A

Is, depending on what you're doing.

A

now, going back to the storing of the data.

A

one of the questions that will probably come up or usually should becoming up is, how gdpr compliant is nop?

A

great point.. I didn't expect to talk about this.

B

But since I was there firsthand,, I was at the nop congress conference in 2017.

B

An individual was giving a talk on gdpr.

B

right. nop community was there like andre and the rest of the people. Are that make up. they're like gdpr,? We better pay attention..

B

It's amazing how fast they turned in really got that out in the next version to support gdpr and have improved it in every release.

B

So I think they discovered gdpr around the 4.0 version,.

B

Four, that was already out. okay.. They put in some gdpr aspects on 4.1 and 4.2,. They made it better., so they definitely listen a respond to the community.

B

I saw it firsthand that they take this so serious.

B

Yep. andre and his team that they will listen to you.

A

Well,, it could have some significant implications if you don't implement it right..

A

So if you're, an e-commerce company and you're using an open source framework,, you need to make sure that it is, and that's not just for this one, but for our audience as well as they were watching.

A

if you're using any a platform.stores customer data,.

A

You need to be aware of gdpr and how that can impede, because.

A

The fines can be severe as.

B

We are learning the last couple of weeks..

B

I find that when it comes to gdpr on the like the business features as well as in the technical features.

B

I find that nopcommerce has like right where they should be.

B

In other words, we're not bleeding edge on either. sure. they're right there at the edge, but not falling forward.

B

actually,. I have a good example of that. sure.. I highlighted certain versions to like version 1.9 to 2.0.

B

They actually move from web forms back in the day to mvc.

B

The glory days of webform. bring it on.

A

Fun in that change and all that.

B

Then, when it comes to prepping for core,, I liked how they didn't just cut over the.net core.

B

sure.. So what they did from version 3.9 to 4.0 is that they put in more that when it comes to the views whatnot in working with tag helpers., they still compiled the framework in 4.0, but they.

B

Were able to move a ladder, codebase more.net, core ready.

A

B

So they didn't make his hard mandate..

B

We got to compile to core. yes., they did what was sensible,, and I think this is actually a really good example. Just looking at how this company did it and how most companies should probably adopt core.

B

yep., it's all right.

A

It doesn't have to be that hard.

B

Yeah. absolutely., it's a big transition as well.

A

So if you're interested on .net,, the full framework, going to.net core,, there's a big learning curve, and there's a lot of work that is required,, especially for opposite hit them to grow. Organically.

A

Yeah., so I think that's a great example, and if people want to look at how that was done., I think that's one way to go, right?, yes, and then 4.0 to 4.1,.

B

That's when you could cup out of core,.

A

And then 4.1 to 4.2,.

B

4.2 is just released out in the spring.

B

now, they're, advocating even that you can run this on linux and it's also is docker ready.

B

So when it comes having docker file,.

B

All that in place that you could utilize, it's ready to go, pretty impressive.

A

I suppose, considering the size of the website of the advocating going towards a microservices architecture or using some like aks, to run the site.

B

You could,, I guess., because the architecture itself,, I think, if you really want to break it out into like microservices or something like that,, you could.

B

okay., so they're, appealing to a lot of different markets..

B

They are appealing to market like wordpress, using woocommerce or even magenta..

B

So we could have something up and running fast., it's not so easy to have a multi-tier architecture.

B

Of microservices and message, queues, that'll be up and running fast., but if you really wanted to work with their core libraries and put your own entry points into those pieces,, I think you really could break this up. If you really had to scale.

A

So right, now,, it's more or less of a monolith that runs in a container rather than running on bare bones or say a web app on azure, right?.

A

Right. but it's a library.

B

That you can pull into multiple entry, points.

B

yeah. absolutely., so they did a right thing.. They didn't put everything under.

B

a matter of fact,. Let's look at some business logic. Here.

B

sounds good. because if you're not,, let's see.

B

We jump in here. all right., so we're going to look at the nop.services and nop.core a little bit closer. just a little bit recap,. We got the controller that instantiates the model, and it also returns the view that has a reference to the model,, your normal mvc stuff.

B

sure.. Then the controller will get its data for something called the service, a factory to make you think of as a service,.

B

And that service is going to populate a domain entity, and then it's going to fill in the model., so the separation that concerns in this architecture is pretty strong. nice.. So that's yes,, exactly.

A

I suspect that auto-mapper is somewhere around here, where it comes.

B

Yes, we will show an example of that. good., so dependency, injection and inversion of control,.

B

These are two different topics.. I always get introduced to me as some definition like this or some boxes and all that.

B

So dependency injection is typically data that you're trying to pass through a constructor..

B

That's how it's implemented most of the time. okay.. Then inversion of control is a framework around how things can go very crazy,, and I will show an example of how things go very crazy.

B

When it comes to looking at dependency injection, looking at the customer controller,, I could've picked on one of the services, but picked on the customer controller.. Here we have about 30 plus dependencies.

B

≫ yeah. going into that controller., so you can probably think of those as each one of those maybe hitting a table,. Hopefully one or more tables in order by the appropriate context.

B

The example that we looked at earlier, where we came to populating the model. yeah. that basically came from that first dependency: that's passed to prepare the register. Model.

B

got it., so all the data is getting injected. Correctly.

B

okay.! Let me ask you this,: why do we do things like this?.

B

Testability. testability,, yes, it's a softball question., I pass., so the customer service classes and this example is one of.

B

The classes in the solution and it works, mocking out data.

B

By yes,, this is the reason why we do this, is why we make it wasn't this hard of the '90s,. I tell people.

B

But that's done for good reasons, and we can write unit test and control the data for those tests.

B

So here's where things can go crazy., so we're back at the same example, and what if we look, this address model factory?.

A

Right. for what that has an all of its dependencies,.

B

You would think that it is a pretty simple class.

B

Or pretty simple factory for.

A

Making assumption because you never know.

A

here, we go., so we take a closer look at this.

B

And if we were to make a constructor with no parameters,.

B

We're in wine, I will instantiate all of these classes.

B

sure.. I thought I'd see where this ago., so this is not enough commerce.. So for the address model factory itself,, he can see that you've got the dependencies of the dependencies that you would have to consider. If you were to manually instantiate this everywhere. Where you see red is a database connection.

A

I purposely left that so you see that.

B

Well. but yes,, I type all the cinema watching some tv show and there was like 2, 300 some-odd dependencies of dependencies.

B

yes. when it comes to managing dependency. Injection.

A

Oh, wow still going.

B

Still going. yes,: this was not fun to do.

B

Of course,, I didn't do the rest,. I just wanted to get to know. [Inaudible].

A

Wow, that was not a complete list? yeah., that's a lot.! I mean it's a big application. Show, there is a lot of services,.

A

There is a lot of factories there, I get it,, but it goes to show how complicated these applications can be, right?.

B

Right,- and that shows why out of the box, you really should think of a container.

B

fortunately,. There is one built-in,, asp.net core,, but autofac was carried forward.

B

They might switch over to the built-in,, I'm not sure,, but autofac was available at the time, along with a few other ones, to choose from.

A

So as an example,.

B

The pattern that's put in place for autofac, you'll see what this looks: like.. They had this pattern..

B

So where are the have this dependency register class that is used within the architecture itself, as well as within your plugins. yeah., because the plug-ins themselves follow the same architecture as everything else we're looking at today.

A

B

I did a search,, I'm sorry, on the dependency register class to show world it's found throughout the architecture,.

B

But it's really the autofac container builders getting passed to this particular registry method, and there's that same instantiation.

B

Of the address model factory that we had to worry about, and it's also interface-based. so here, we're able to do and one line of code.

B

And safe way versus the ugly way of worrying about how to instantiate.

B

yes,, that's optional right.. So this, like hamlet at home. For me, the value of an ioc.

B

Yes. hopefully, everyone else out there size of application, right?.

B

Yes. all right., so a couple other examples on autofac.

B

There's this ones kind like by criteria,, but I think these are a little bit more [inaudible] . by type,. It's anything on this type going and deal with the instantiation on that,, all the controllers,, all the controllers up a memory, instantiated., right, yeah., so the customer controller, we're looking at would have been a good example of how that would've been caught, and more commonly for your data access. Layer.

B

now,. This code might be a little difficult to read,, but this is where you find working with containers most often used initially.

B

Sure., I guess you'd say when it comes to working with your repositories.

A

This one using indifferent more core to interact with the database, right?. Is it this?, right, brilliant.

B

I will be curious when we look at that, if you have seen entity framework implemented this way in the past.

B

So, first off we're going to show this other example of automapper.

B

Yeah., I know this is a popular library, and we're pretty much.

B

Object.Last time wherever they dug out equals., it saves you that tedious work., correct, yeah., that's awesome library. That's out there.

B

So you get little things can looking at this code. Base.

B

So you have these mapping and there's a reason. I had version 3.9 around this.

B

Where they even treated automapper, almost like a dependency that they wanted to.

B

Control and contain so they created these non-extension methods when it comes to, for example, retrieving the manufacturer and populating the models..

B

So the way this one line of code here is used, it really just calls the one-liner code of automapper.

B

Yeah., but when you look at how it's used, then you will say okay,.

B

And this is nice to where you get manufacturer, and then it populates domain manufacturer,, and then here you have the one layer of two model that populates the model itself..

B

So you got the separation of concerns,, but this is a nice way of automapper to fill those in.

B

now,. This was the 3.9 version,.

B

When I went to look at the 4.2 version, recently, like, hey,, it has changed. yeah.. So I was like okay, the pride changed. for a good reason,. They probably want more business logic around that filling in from the entity to the model.

B

So this prepare manufacturer model,. I thought I've got to, okay,, let's dig deeper into that. One. sure. dig into that a little bit further down,.

B

I noticed while there's the one-liner now,, but now it's using generics.

A

So when the 4.2 version they even made it.

B

Cleaner to work with automapper by passing a generic data,.

B

Where you don't have to create these extension methods, everywhere.

A

I also suspect that this game, at the same time that automapper was because there was a major breaking changes to the latest framework. If I remember correctly,, so a lot of things changed around how automapper.

A

Yeah, so it definitely looks cleaner.

B

But it's nice to see how much on top and we've been.

B

Working with these other libraries, how much they're on top of making them better., yes., good., all right., so yeah we looked at services,.

B

The domain entity and that fills the model., let's see. yeah,, we didn't make any logic yet.

B

In other words,, this is a logic class where you got to delete customer. yeah., that's just tacking on data deleted, updating the record is not really deleting anything.

A

So soft delete more or less, right?, exactly soft delete like.

B

Most architectures that you see in it is passing the customer entity to this to work. With.

B

What I like about this is that if you were to look at one those entities closer,, you see that they're pretty dumb., it's just properties and child properties,.

B

I guess you'd say it, our child collections. As you see, here,.

B

But all the business logic is in the right: spot.

B

right. there not mixing or hiding any other business logic in your domain entities,, so that it's a really clean and even at that minute, level.

B

So I'm going to jump to some data access, stuff.

B

Yes. now,, this is where I'm curious., if you've seen entity framework implemented like this before.

A

As a reminder,, we're looking at the.net framework, core stuff, right?,.

B

Yes, and yet they brought this ported over to core really,.

B

And you could even do a comparison of the different versions as the effort it was there and it wasn't that difficult is more so waiting for core to have certain standards in place.

B

yes.. That framework had.

A

So while there are some subtle differences like the many-to-many relationships that are expressed differently on ef code, nowhere in the previous expressions like in [inaudible]., so I suspect that there were some changes in the modal around that but.

B

Yeah, there could have been., but what I like about the database model itself for what I was looking for. An architecture,.

B

The database is a very simple database to follow., so just zooming in on how customers are related to other pieces.

B

It's not over-complicated in those regards at all.

A

Yeah, for the sides of the application., I mean it looks fairly simple.

B

Sometimes you find really crazy structures and [inaudible].

A

But naming or [inaudible]? they try to make the relational database.

B

Until like an object, database, and has based on craziness going on., there's a little bit of that error, very little,.

B

But assuming things have struck the right balance of that.

B

Yes. when it becomes a really work with relational database, and the best way when you have to work with things that are more like entities like, would you probably use with a nosql database., which is something that was going to ask like if you.

A

Are a big org that decides to use the one,?

A

How hard would it be to transition to say, cosmos db from a sql,.

A

But not that it doesn't work but.

B

Now, you're going to get into my example, because this is where.

A

It's something you've done: here, okay.

B

So yes, they moved from.net framework, 6 to.net framework core for all this,, and the way this architecture is created is that they use the repository pattern.

B

So a service will work with one or more repositories to get his data, and it works with his domain map requests that provides us.

B

Flow and way of tacking on metadata to the domain itself.

B

So it's not duplicating data objects code. I guess you'd like,.

B

But when it comes to a domain, mapper class, we're going to look at an example. Here.

A

So we're enriching the data rather than.

B

Exactly,, instead of putting all those attributes around your domain, entities, those data, attributes, they've, done it in a way that we use the domain mapper that keeps it in a clean, way., nice and clean, cool. we're going to see some of that too. all right..

B

So here's a pretty common example.

B

Like getcustomerid, where it's really almost like a pass-through.

B

A

Get id. I've seen.

B

This in many architectures, where we had this interface,, I have repository of this type customer in an on the interface. Has his getbyid, seen this a lot.

B

So you had this, I repository it has getbyid insert update audio crud operations on your domains.

B

Irepository is implemented by ef repository, which is pretty nice.

B

I think it's kind of funny.. I think this comment is now gone,, but this is in the source code of why they did this way.

B

I, like comments.,.

A

But it's great, why is there.

B

So I think they actually have taken,, but nonetheless, I thought is pretty neat. They actually are pretty open up like this is why we did it. This way.

B

Okay. all right,, so this is where I'm curious to get your opinion on this to whether you like this or not.

B

So here you have the table property,.

B

That's a type I queryable., what's actually as a passthrough here at the end of this via idbset.

B

now,. If we were to go to the customer service, class,.

B

It's in the business logic.

A

Because we have that table property exposed, in theory,.

B

We're just projecting this query to entity framework, which is then issuing that query.

B

So under the covers, you really,.

B

In theory should be change out any framework and put it in, let's say and hibernate or dapper or some other orm that adheres to the interface.

B

Now,, when people see this example,, they see,.

B

Okay, in the business logic, you're doing a query.

B

dbas, probably don't like this.

B

most dbas, I know., but I found it to be,.

B

Not so much that I liked it or didn't like it,, I found it to be interesting.. I never thought of using entity framework in this way in the past,.

A

And it does provide that for quick queries like.

B

This, where you're doing a query on a key- and you want to buy this order,- it's probably okay., but if you have something pretty complex,, I'm sure you want to do something: a different way., I'm pulling back that data. now,. Have you seen entity framework used this way in the past?.

A

Well, I've seen sometimes in the framework getting into business logic.

A

Layers that shouldn't be there, but at the same time, it's a compromise between efficiency and modularity.

A

So sometimes, you do it where it's faster and more efficient and.

A

Sometimes it gets code smells that are not the best.

A

So I would say, use sparingly and based on a case-by-case scenario, but-.

A

So, in theory is if your provider adheres to.

B

Those interfaces, you have the same power?

B

yeah., so I found that to be very interesting.

B

So I've, given this talk quite a few times to where I will ask, has anybody seen this before., I'm so impressed that it's a lot of people that are people that have just come right out of college.

A

So they're professor taught.

B

Them how to use entity framework in this way, which blows me away that they abstract entity framework that far in college.

B

Well, sometimes too many layers can also cause problems,.

A

Especially if you're a new developer into a big codebase,.

A

It becomes like a treasure hunt where you have to find.

A

Where things get instantiated and actually get cold.

A

So you're down the rabbit hole., so I prefer to favor simplicity over complicated stuff,.

A

But this is a big solution: show. again, having that ability to modularize your backend will be fantastic to be able to., not many people do it..

A

They don't go from entity framework to say dapper,.

A

Just halfway through the project,, but I know a couple of guys., I asked it on twitter, the other day, and some people came back and said, yeah,. We actually moved to a different framework,, because the one that we initially chose was not performing or did not have the capability to we're, looking for.

A

so having the architecture to support, that is fantastic.

A

Yes,, we really could go down the path of changing it. Up.

A

You said that we're going to look into some extensions, row, right? yes,. I was going to wrap up on the mapper.

B

To show that example, how this domain mapper works.

B

then yes,, I think we can look at some plug-ins., so you have this customer map class, and when it comes to that attribute, I'd like the length of the system name,, instead of putting it as an attribute on the model or the domain entity.

B

it's here in the fluid type syntax is getting tacked. On.

A

Its separation of concerns as well,, so you can update this one.. We are having to update the unit base class.

B

Exactly, by keeping the right spot. now,, this isn't actually a nopcommerce thing.. This isn't any framework.

A

So not to confuse out what's getting inherited, there.

B

I really to wrap up the data side., I'm sorry.

B

Image files,: you can store them in the database file system.

B

The configuration management's pretty rich here.

B

there's a lot of things that are out-of-the-box and help prepare for azure,. Also the readiness for a caching solution..

B

I found this architecture pretty cool to look at when it comes to looking into ways how simple how this was implemented.

B

If I can't take you directly into code right now,, but that piece of it, but it's a great architecture, to look at on how do I implement redis.

A

You'll probably be pleasantly surprised on that.

B

So yes, what I want to point out.

B

One thing I glossed over is that you can just run the application life..

B

You can run the storefront and the administrator map to path..

B

We fire these up at a time, and you can log into the administrator and really just play. Around, create orders, break stuff.. They refresh the database every 15 minutes, and you can play around there.

B

when it comes to github, of course,, definitely go out there to check out the source code and, let's look at some code. Here.

B

So what I want to point out, first off.

B

Actually, probably we dig into that code itself when it comes to work with github. hopefully,. This is easy to see for everyone else., you can work on github in two different ways.. You don't have to use git,. You can actually use svn..

B

I know there's not a lot of people that use svn and why would they use it,, but it is nice how you can actually use the svn way of.

B

Doing things, if you really want to have those specific versions available., so if you're nopcommerce developer,, you are typically wanting to test against previous versions.

B

yes. having a structure like this, where svn,.

B

You have these different tags that you can have out there, those source code..

B

I know it's a copy,, but nonetheless, you might want to keep those copies out there for you to work with, as well as what's going on in trunk and develop., so I actually worked with both..

B

I use svn, how I connect with github as well as this.

B

I use git first of all.,.

A

Then I work with things in the normal fashion.

B

So really want to wrap up here, when it comes to looking at all the plugins that come out of the box..

B

You don't really want to get into detail on these,, but when you get that breadth of what the architecture looks and feels like when it comes to dependency injection and how entity framework is implemented,, and even with that mapper class I showed at the end,, you can go to one of the more complicated plug-ins like this fixed or by countries state zip..

B

What that is on the shipping side is a plug-in.

B

That you can manually put in place and how you'd calculate shipping cost., there's also providers for ups and all them as well, where you can hit a web service and and get that,.

B

But this is one that's out of the box..

B

So something like this has a database table involved.

A

B

It has domain entities., it has views that you're changing out from administering to what you're doing on the ui..

B

So what's most awesome about this architecture is that it.

B

Just follows that same pattern of the full application, even at the plug-in level.

B

brilliant., the plug-ins themselves, yes, as a software developer that can test where a lot of I think developers are attracted to create their own plug-ins or themes. Also.

B

There's a market out there for having different themes that are nopcommerce. as a matter of fact,. I would like to show you one example.

B

If we look at the nopcommerce site.

B

To get a feel for, what's out there on the marketplace.

B

So yes,, if you scroll through here,,.

B

I think this will even tell us how these port numbers out.

B

I believe there's as we get at the marketplace: here,.

B

You can see, what's our free or what you can pay for.

B

But actually, what I wanted to show was the partner solution.

B

Here's a whole bunch of examples out there.

B

Showcase. there we go.

B

so yes,. You can see the 100,120 examples that are out there that are highlighted on their site.

B

they're now shared at 50,000 active sites using up commerce.

B

Just a couple of years, ago,, their number was 30,000.

B

just growing and growing dramatically.

A

They almost doubled in two years on the number of active sites.

B

So yeah,, when it comes to the nopcommerce, I mean,, I think it, even though it's been around for close to 11 years,.

B

As a.net developer,, you didn't miss anything.

B

Now's the time to dig into this solution., there's other ones out, there., there's other e-commerce solutions out there that are interesting,.

B

But I think this one has that stack for .net developer. That really is worth digging into.

A

Well, john. thanks for coming today and telling us all about nopcommerce and e-commerce, and.net core.

A

yeah, thanks for having me.. If you want to learn about an nopcommerce as well,.

A

Then make sure to check the aka.ms/on.net-nopcommerce.

A