Review: S#arp Lite, a Lightweight Framework for Delivering ASP.NET MVC Solutions (Part 1)

this is a review of the s#arp lite project , the version from nov 4, 2011.

i was asked to review this project a long time ago, but i never got around to it. i had some time and i decided that i might take a look and see how it goes. i don’t like the s#arp arch project, because it seems too complex and heavy weight for the purpose.

the project comes with a sample application, which is good, because it is easy to see how the framework is intended to be used. unfortunately, it is yet another online store example, i am getting heartily sick of that. on the other hand, it is a fairly simple model and easy to understand, so i grok why this keeps getting chosen.

review rule, i look at the code . if i wanted to deal with documentation, i would write some for our products. i am doing this because i find it fun to look at other people’s code. so skip any comments about “if you read the docs…”.

we start from the project structure:

i am not sure if i like it, i don’t know if i agree that all of those splits are needed, but this is well within reasonable limits, so i am willing to let it slide on the grounds that this is personal taste more than anything else. looking at the dependencies, we see:

the init project contains two files, which are responsible for… well, starting up, it seems. again, i don’t see any reason why this would be a separate project, but that is about it so far.

next in line is the nhibernateprovider project, in this case, we have the following:

so far, i am cautiously optimistic. all of the files / folders marked with red are actually all about setting nhibernate up , not about hiding it. but then we get to the read me file, which reads in part:

this folder contains any concrete, nhibernate-specific query classes.
there should only be classes in here for any respective query *interfaces* found in
/mystore.domain/queries/

this folder will usually be empty except for very exceptive cases.

this is… interesting. can’t say whatever i agree or not yet. looking at the queryforproductordersummaries, we see:

note the comment, there are better ways to do it, but we demonstrate an ugly way, and how to nicely encapsulate it.

that is enough for now, i think, next post, i’ll touch on the actual model…