Dashboard Application Architecture Detail

This section builds upon the Dashboard Architecture Pattern Overview, providing implementation detail and other specifics useful to understanding and working with the Ed-Fi Dashboards application.

Request Handling

The figure below shows an end-to-end slice for the School Category List, which is a page for the Local Education Agency that shows all of its schools, grouped by category (e.g., elementary, middle school, high school). 

The figure above shows an end-to-end slice for the School Category List, which is a page for the Local Education Agency that shows all of its schools, grouped by category (e.g., elementary, middle school, high school). The following list describes the steps involved in receiving a request for the web page to the point of rendering a web page.

1. A logged-in user makes a request to https://ourwebsite.org/GrandBendISD/SchoolCategoryList.
2. The URL is matched to the LocalEducationAgency_Resources route as registered in the LocalEducationAgencyAreaRegistration class.
3. The explicit controller implementation SchoolCategoryListController is found by ASP.NET MVC using default conventions, and the Get action is invoked.

4. The ASP.NET MVC model binder translates the route values (the Local Education Agency Id in this case) into an instance of the SchoolCategoryListRequest class which is the parameter needed to invoke the Get action method on the SchoolCategoryListController. This request object is the same request needed for the call to the service.

   NOTE: If no explicit controller implementation is provided, the EdFiControllerFactory implementation will attempt to identify the service for the requested resource by convention. If it finds a matching service, it will use a generic passthrough controller to call the service and initiate rendering of the view. If no special behavior needs to be added in order to render the view for a particular resource, the controller implementation is optional.

5. The controller invokes the Get method of the ISchoolCategoryListService implementation.
6. The SchoolCategoryListService class uses the injected IRepository<SchoolInformation> and IRepository<SchoolGradePopulation> implementations to construct a query that retrieves the necessary data to populate and return a collection of SchoolCategoryModel objects.
7. The SchoolCategoryListController returns a View action result with the model returned by the service.
8. ASP.NET MVC finds the appropriate view based on conventions and renders the web page.

Loading Dashboards Data into C# Entity Objects

To make the application data accessible to the C# Presentation Services layer, the SubSonic data access framework was used (see http://www.subsonicproject.com). The framework provides code generation templates for use with the “T4” engine included with Visual Studio to create classes for each table as shown in the image below.

The application uses the Generic Repository pattern to provide access to data. Rather than build custom repository methods for extracting data, the Generic Repository provides the application developer with access to tables via an IRepository<T> generic interface. The repository object is instantiated for a specific entity (i.e., database table), and then LINQ-based queries are formed using the IQueryable<T> returned by the GetAll method. The SubSonic SimpleRepository class translates the LINQ query expressions into SQL for execution.

Preparing C# View Models from Data Entities

public IList<SchoolCategoryModel> Get(SchoolCategoryListRequest listRequest)
{
    var listContext = uniqueListIdProvider.GetUniqueId();
    var results = (from data in repository.GetAll()
        where data.LocalEducationAgencyId == listRequest.LocalEducationAgencyId &&
            schoolGradePopulationRepository.GetAll()
            .Select(o => o.SchoolId).Contains(data.SchoolId)
            select data).ToList();
        var schoolCategories = results.GroupBy(x => x.SchoolCategory).OrderBy(y => y.Key, 
            new SchoolCategoryComparer(schoolCategoryProvider));
    
        return (from schoolCategory in schoolCategories
            select new SchoolCategoryModel
            {
                Category = schoolCategory.Key == ungraded ? other : schoolCategory.Key,
                    Schools = 
                        (from c1 in schoolCategory
                            orderby c1.Name
                            select new SchoolCategoryModel.School
                            {
                                SchoolId = c1.SchoolId,
                                Name = c1.Name,
                                Url = schoolLinks.Default(c1.SchoolId, c1.Name).AppendParameters("listContext=" + listContext),
                                Links = new List<Link> { 
                                    new Link { 
                                        Rel = students, 
                                        Href = schoolLinks.StudentsByGrade(c1.SchoolId, c1.Name)
                                            .AppendParameters("listContext=" + listContext).Resolve() },
                                    new Link { 
                                        Rel = teachers, 
                                        Href = schoolLinks.Teachers(c1.SchoolId, c1.Name)
                                        .AppendParameters("listContext=" + listContext).Resolve() }
                                }
                            }
                        )
                    }
                )    
            }
        ).ToList();
}

@model ContainerMetric
           
<tr>
    <td style="height: 23px;" colspan="9">
        <table style="width: 100%;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
            <tr>
                <td style="width: 10px;">
                </td>
                <td>
                    <span id="vMetricId@(Model.MetricId)" class="metricId PageTitleTextStyle">
                        @(Model.MetricId)
                    </span>
                    <span class="PageTitleTextStyle" style="text-transform: uppercase;">
                        @(Model.Name)
                    </span>
                    <br />
                    <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0">
                        <tbody>
                            <tr>
                                <td style="text-align: left;">
                                    @Html.Partial("JumpToMetricSubcategory", Model.Children)
                                </td>
                            </tr>
                        </tbody>
                    </table>
                </td>
                <td style="text-align: right; vertical-align: top;">
                </td>
            </tr>
        </table>
    </td>
</tr>