Requests

Requests are really the center of all the action in the Mediator. Request can only be fulfilled/responded to by a single handler. Requests also have the ability to respond with a result as well.

When issuing a request, we start a fresh Service Provider scope. This means that any dependencies that are registered as Scoped will be disposed of after the request is completed. If you need to maintain a dependency, you should register it as Singleton

Creating Requests

A request can be a class, record, or struct. It must implement the IRequest interface. If you want to return a result, then you must implement IRequest<TResult>

public record VoidRequest(string AnyArgs, int YouWant) : Shiny.Mediator.IRequest;

public record ResponseRequest : IRequest<Response>;
public record Response(string Anything);

The request handlers are also very similar

public class VoidRequestHandler : IRequestHandler<VoidRequest>
{
    public async Task Handle(VoidRequest request, CancellationToken ct)
    {
        // do something async here
    }
}

public class ResponseRequestHandler : IRequestHandler<ResponseRequest, Response>
{
    public async Task<Response> Handle(ResponseRequest request, CancellationToken ct)
    {
        var response = await GetResponseThing(ct);
        return response;
    }
}

Now, let’s register these guys through your host builder/DI container. They can technically work off any lifecycle you choose.

services.AddSingleton<IRequestHandler<VoidRequest>, VoidRequestHandler>();
services.AddSingleton<IRequestHandler<ResponseRequest, Response>, ResponseRequestHandler>();

// OR USING OUR EASY EXTENSION METHOD
services.AddSingletonAsImplementedInterfaces<VoidRequestHandler>();
services.AddSingletonAsImplementedInterfaces<ResponseRequestHandler>();

Finally, let’s send a request through the mediator

IMediator mediator; // get from your DI container or inject into your DI aware component

await mediator.Send(new VoidRequest("Hello", 123));

var result = await mediator.Send(new ResponseRequest());

Middleware

In our opinion, this is where Shiny Mediator really begins to shine. Layering overtop of your requests with middleware is beautiful. We offer some excellent out of the box middleware. Be sure to check out it here

Middleware allows you to mutate the requests, response, or even short circuit the request. It’s a great place to do things like logging, error handling, caching, etc.

Let’s take a look at an sample piece of request middleware that handles a specific use-case

public class MyRequestMiddleware : IRequestMiddleware<ResponseRequest, Response>
{
    public async Task<Response> Process(
        ResponseRequest request,
        RequestHandlerDelegate<Response> next,
        IRequestHandler<ResponseRequest, Response> requestHandler,
        CancellationToken cancellationToken
    )
    {
        // do something before the request is handled
        var response = await next();
        // do something after the request is handled
        return response;
    }
}

Now, let’s register this middleware with your host builder

services.AddSingleton<IRequestMiddleware<ResponseRequest, Response>, MyRequestMiddleware>();

Let’s take a look a general purpose middleware that handles any request

public class MyGeneralMiddleware<TRequest, TResult>: IRequestMiddleware<TResult, TResult>
{
    public async Task<TResult> Process(
        TRequest request,
        RequestHandlerDelegate next,
        IRequestHandler requestHandler,
        CancellationToken cancellationToken
    )
    {
        // do something before the request is handled
        await next();
        // do something after the request is handled
    }
}

Make sure to register this middleware with your host builder using an open generic

ServiceCollection services;
services.AddSingleton(typeof(IRequestMiddleware<,>), typeof(MyGeneralMiddleware<,>));