BizTalk 2009 : WCF LOB Adapter SDK (part 2) - UI Logical Grouping

6/26/2011 4:33:16 PM

2. Step 2: UI Logical Grouping

In this step, you will modify the HotelAdapterBindingElement and HotelAdapterUri classes to logically group the binding and connection properties that you created in step 1. You will create three categories and arrange the properties within these categories, as shown in Table 8.

Table 8. Adapter Property Categories
Property Name	Category
EnableConnectionPooling	Misc
Application	Connection
EnableAuthentication	Connection
Host	Connection
PollingPeriod	Inbound

When you complete this step and build the project, the binding and connection properties will be grouped and presented in the Add Adapter Service Reference plug-in and Consume Adapter Service add-in, as shown in Figures 8 and 9.

Figure 8. Categorized connection properties

Although categorizing properties is optional, we recommend that you don't ignore this step. The reasoning is simple—categorizing improves user experience, since in many if not most cases adapter consumers will configure adapters using the UI tools.

Figure 9. Categorized binding properties

As you can guess, the implementation is fairly straightforward and doesn't require more than applying the System.ComponentModel.Category attribute to the custom properties. Let's start with the HotelAdapterBindingElement class:

In Visual Studio, open the HotelAdapterBindingElement.cs file.

To assign the Misc category to the EnableConnectionPooling property, place the [System.ComponentModel.Category("")] line of code at the beginning of the EnableConnectionPooling implementation, as shown here:

[System.Configuration.ConfigurationProperty("enableConnectionPooling",
                                          DefaultValue = true)]

public bool EnableConnectionPooling
{
    get
    {
        return ((bool)(base["EnableConnectionPooling"]));
    }
    set

{
        base["EnableConnectionPooling"] = value;
    }
}

Specify the Inbound category for the PollingPeriod property by placing the [System.ComponentModel.Category("Inbound")] line of code at the beginning of the PollingPeriod property, as shown in the following code snippet:

[System.ComponentModel.Category("Inbound")]
[System.Configuration.ConfigurationProperty("pollingPeriod",
    DefaultValue = 10)]

public int PollingPeriod
{
     get
     {
        return ((string)(base["pollingPeriod"]));
     }
     set
     {
        base["pollingPeriod"] = value;
     }
}

Follow a similar procedure for the HotelAdapterConnectionUri class:

In Visual Studio, open the HotelAdapterConnectionUri.cs file.

Expand the Custom Generated Properties region, and apply the [System.ComponentMode.Category("Connection")] attribute to each of the properties in the region. When you finish, the Custom Generated Properties region should match the following code snippet:

#region Custom Generated Properties

[System.ComponentModel.Category("Connection")]
public string Application
{
    get
    {
        return this.application;
    }
    set
    {
        this.application = value;
    }
}

[System.ComponentModel.Category("Connection")]
public bool EnableAuthentication
{
    get
    {
        return this.enableAuthentication;
    }
    set
    {
        this.enableAuthentication = value;
    }
}

[System.ComponentModel.Category("Connection")]
public string Host
{
    get
    {
        return this.host;
    }
    set
    {
        this.host = value;
    }
}

#endregion Custom Generated Properties