SimpleMediator

A .NET/C# implementation of the mediator pattern with support for queries, commands and events. Has first class support for middleware and mediation contexts.

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Motivation

My motivations are the following.

• Defined types (of Messages) for Queries, Commands and Events. Convery the intent clearly.
• Support for cancellation tokens all the way down to message handlers.
• Have a MediationContext. So when the message handler is called, the Message is concise and lightweight. Any context related information is captured in the MediationContext instead.
• Concept of Middleware, where each message goes through the pipeline and response come back through it.
• Have the ability to dispatch messages over the wire to a consumer (and get a response back). The ambition is clearly not to create a full framework that supports sending messages over the wire, but rather to make this library integrate with something like MassTransit with minimal effort.

You can find more details about the design at my blog https://dasith.me/2019/01/07/mediator-pattern-implemented-in-net/

Using It

1. Define a message and response. A message can be a ICommand, IQuery<ResultType> or IEvent

   public class SimpleQuery: IQuery<SimpleResponse>
   {
   }
   
   public class SimpleResponse
   {
       public string Message { get; set; }
   }

2. Define a message handler. A message handler can be CommandHandler<CommandType> for commands, QueryHandler<QueryType, ResultType> for queries and EventHandler<EventType> for events.

   public class SimpleQueryHandler : QueryHandler<SimpleQuery, SimpleResponse>
   {
       protected override async Task<SimpleResponse> HandleQueryAsync(SimpleQuery query,
           IMediationContext mediationContext, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
       {
           Console.WriteLine("Test query executed");
   
           return new SimpleResponse()
           {
               Message = "Test query response message"
           };
       }
   }

3. Use it.

   public class Program
   {
       public static void Main(string[] args)
       {
           RunSample().ConfigureAwait(false).GetAwaiter().GetResult();
           Console.ReadLine();
       }
   
       public static async Task RunSample()
       {
           // You can use your favourite DI library to inject mediator and use it
           using (var container = MicrosoftDependencyContainerHelper.CreateServiceCollection())
           {
               var mediator = container.GetService<IMediator>();
               var simpleQuery = new SimpleQuery();
   
               var result = await mediator.HandleAsync(simpleQuery);
               Console.WriteLine(result.Message);
           }
       }
   }

   • You can find more examples for the concept of middleware here.

   • I have examples of how to set it up with IOC containers here. Autofac and Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection currently have examples but I'll keep adding more as I go.

   • There is also some code samples (work in progress) on how to integrate it with MassTransit to dispatch messages over the wire to consumers. Check it out here.

   As you can see, the usage is pretty straight forward and simple. The middleware gives you a lot of extensibility options and I've even been able to create constrained middleware that validates only certain types of requests.

Contributing

The project code is shared under the MIT license. Feel free to have a look and create a PR if you think there are improvements. Please raise an issues if you find a bug. Thank you.