Question

Is there a way to specify a table to use for Hi-Lo values, with each entity having a per-row entry, via a convention (while still having nHibernate create the table structure for you)? I would like to replicate what Phil Haydon blogged about here, but without having to manually manage the table. As it stands, migrating his row-per-table code to its own convention will work only if you’ve already created the appropriate entries for ‘TableKey’ in the table already.

Alternatively, is this possible via the XML mappings?

And if all else fails, is the only other appropriate option to use a custom generator, a la this post?

Answer 1

Fabio Maulo talked about this in one of his mapping-by-code posts.

Mapping by code example:

mapper.BeforeMapClass += (mi, type, map) =>
    map.Id(idmap => idmap.Generator(Generators.HighLow,
        gmap => gmap.Params(new
        {
            table = "NextHighValues",
            column = "NextHigh",
            max_lo = 100,
            where = string.Format(
                "EntityName = '{0}'", type.Name.ToLowerInvariant())
        })));

For FluentNHibernate, you could do something like:

public class PrimaryKeyConvention : IIdConvention
{
    public void Apply(IIdentityInstance instance)
    {
        var type = instance.EntityType.Name;
        instance.Column(type + "Id");
        instance.GeneratedBy.HiLo(type, "NextHigh", "100", 
            x => x.AddParam("where", String.Format("EntityName = '{0}'", type));
    }
}

Also, Fabio explained how you could use IAuxiliaryDatabaseObject to create Hi-Lo script.

private static IAuxiliaryDatabaseObject CreateHighLowScript(
    IModelInspector inspector, IEnumerable<Type> entities)
{
    var script = new StringBuilder(3072);
    script.AppendLine("DELETE FROM NextHighValues;");
    script.AppendLine(
        "ALTER TABLE NextHighValues ADD EntityName VARCHAR(128) NOT NULL;");
    script.AppendLine(
        "CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IdxNextHighValuesEntity ON NextHighValues " 
        + "(EntityName ASC);");
    script.AppendLine("GO");

    foreach (var entity in entities.Where(x => inspector.IsRootEntity(x)))
    {
        script.AppendLine(string.Format(
         "INSERT INTO [NextHighValues] (EntityName, NextHigh) VALUES ('{0}',1);",
         entity.Name.ToLowerInvariant()));
    }

    return new SimpleAuxiliaryDatabaseObject(
        script.ToString(), null, new HashedSet<string> {
           typeof(MsSql2005Dialect).FullName, typeof(MsSql2008Dialect).FullName 
        });
}

You would use it like this:

configuration.AddAuxiliaryDatabaseObject(CreateHighLowScript(
    modelInspector, Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetExportedTypes()));