Author: Derek Comartin

In my previous blog Query Objects instead of Repositories, I demonstrated creating query objects and handlers to encapsulate and execute query logic instead of polluting a repository with both read and write methods.  Since we have moved away from repositories and are now using query objects, we will introduce the Mediator pattern. It will allows have a common interface that can be injected into our controller or various parts of our application. The mediator will delegate our query objects to the appropriate handler that will perform the query and return the results.

First we will create an interface that will be used on all of our query objects.

public interface IQuery<out TResponse> { }

Now we need to create an interface that all of our query handlers will implement.

public interface IHandleQueries<in TQuery, out TResponse>
	where TQuery : IQuery<TResponse>
{
	TResponse Handle(TQuery query);
}

Next we will create our Mediator interface. Most examples you will see that are implementing command handlers generally are showing an IFakeBus or something similar. The difference being that generally in the Bus implementation there is no return type. On the query side, our intent is to return data.

public interface IMediate
{
	TResponse Request<TResponse>(IQuery<TResponse> query);
}

There are many ways you can implement your mediator. As an example:

public class Mediator : IMediate
{
	public delegate object Creator(Mediator container);

	private readonly Dictionary<Type, Creator> _typeToCreator = new Dictionary<Type, Creator>();

	public void Register<T>(Creator creator)
	{
		_typeToCreator.Add(typeof(T), creator);
	}

	private T Create<T>()
	{
		return (T)_typeToCreator[typeof(T)](this);
	}

	public TResponse Request<TResponse>(IQuery<TResponse> query)
	{
		var handler = Create<IHandleQueries<IQuery<TResponse>, TResponse>>();
		return handler.Handle(query);
	}
 }

Now that we have our interfaces and mediator implementation, we need to modify our existing queries and handlers.

public class ProductDetailsQuery : IQuery<ProductDetailModel>
{
	public Guid ProductId { get; private set; }

	public ProductDetailsQuery(Guid productId)
	{
		ProductId = productId;
	}
}

public class ProductDetailQueryHandler : IHandleQueries<ProductDetailsQuery, ProductDetailModel>
{
	private DbContext _db;
 
	public ProductDetailQueryHandler(DbContext db)
	{
		_db = db;
	}
 
	public ProductDetailModel Handle(ProductDetailsQuery query)
	{
		var product = (from p in _db.Products where p.ProductId == query.ProductId).SingleOrDefault();
		if (product == null) {
			throw new InvalidOperationException("Product does not exist.");
		}
 
 		var relatedProducts = (from p in _db.RecommendedProducts where p.PrimaryProductId == query.ProductId);
 
 		return new ProductDetailsModel
		{
			Id = product.Id,
			Name = product.Name,
			Price = product.Price,
			PriceFormatted = product.Price.ToString("C"),
			RecommendedProducts = (from x in relatedProducts select new ProductDetailModel.RecommendedProducts {
				ProductId = x.RecommendedProductId,
				Name = x.Name,
				Price = x.Price,
				PriceFormatted = x.Price.ToString("C")
			})
		};
	}
 }

Now in our controller, instead of either creating a new instance of the query handler in our controllers or having all them injected into the constructor, we now simply inject the mediator.

public class ProductController : Controller
{
	private IMediate _mediator;
	
	public ProductController(IMediate mediator)
	{
		_mediator = mediator;
	}
	
	public ViewResult ProductDetails(ProductDetailQuery query)
	{
		var model = _mediator.Request(query);
		return View(model);
	}
}

As before, we have encapsulated the generation of our view model into its own object but now a common interface in a mediator to handle the incoming query object requests.