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Stateful Resources

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This feature was added in Oakton 4.5.0

When you're working with the codebase of an application or service, you're also likely to also be working with external infrastructure like databases or messaging brokers. Taking the example of a database, at various times during development you may want to:

  • Set up the database schema from a brand new database installation
  • Completely tear down the database schema to reclaim resources
  • Clear all existing data out of the development database, but leave the schema in place
  • Check that your code can indeed connect to the database
  • Maybe interrogate the database for some kind of metrics that helps you test or troubleshoot your code

To that end, Oakton has the IStatefulResource model and the new resources command as a way of interacting with these stateful resources like databases or messaging brokers from the command line or even at application startup time.

IStatefulResource Adapter

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Oakton assumes that there will be anywhere from 0 to many stateful resources in your application.

The first element is the Oakton.Resources.IStatefulResource interface shown below:

cs
/// <summary>
///     Adapter interface used by Oakton enabled applications to allow
///     Oakton to setup/teardown/clear the state/check on stateful external
///     resources of the system like databases or messaging queues
/// </summary>
public interface IStatefulResource
{
    /// <summary>
    ///     Categorical type name of this resource for filtering
    /// </summary>
    string Type { get; }

    /// <summary>
    ///     Identifier for this resource
    /// </summary>
    string Name { get; }

    /// <summary>
    ///     Check whether the configuration for this resource is valid. An exception
    ///     should be thrown if the check is invalid
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="token"></param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    Task Check(CancellationToken token);

    /// <summary>
    ///     Clear any persisted state within this resource
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="token"></param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    Task ClearState(CancellationToken token);

    /// <summary>
    ///     Tear down the stateful resource represented by this implementation
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="token"></param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    Task Teardown(CancellationToken token);

    /// <summary>
    ///     Make any necessary configuration to this stateful resource
    ///     to make the system function correctly
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="token"></param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    Task Setup(CancellationToken token);

    /// <summary>
    ///     Optionally return a report of the current state of this resource
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="token"></param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    Task<IRenderable> DetermineStatus(CancellationToken token);
}

snippet source | anchor

You can create a new adapter for your infrastructure by implementing this interface and registering a service in your .Net application's DI container. As an example, Jasper creates an IStatefulResource adapter to its Rabbit MQ integration to allow Oakton to setup, teardown, purge, and check on the expected Rabbit MQ queues for an application.

The second abstraction is the smaller Oakton.Resources.IStatefulResourceSource that's just a helper to "find" other stateful resources. The Weasel library exposes the DatabaseResources adapter to "find" all the known Weasel managed databases to enable Oakton's stateful resource management.

cs
/// <summary>
///     Expose multiple stateful resources
/// </summary>
public interface IStatefulResourceSource
{
    IReadOnlyList<IStatefulResource> FindResources();
}

snippet source | anchor

To make the implementations easier, there is also an Oakton.Resources.StatefulResourceBase base class you can use to make stateful resource adapters that only implement some of the possible operations.

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Oakton automatically adds environment checks for each stateful resource using its Check() method

At Startup Time

Forget the command line for a second, if you have service registrations for IStatefulResource, you've got some available tooling at runtime.

First, to just have your system automatically setup all resources on startup, use this option:

cs
using var host = await Host.CreateDefaultBuilder()
    .ConfigureServices(services =>
    {
        // More service registrations like this is a real app!

        services.AddResourceSetupOnStartup();
    }).StartAsync();

snippet source | anchor

The code above adds a custom IHostedService at the front of the line to call the Setup() method on each registered IStatefulResource in your application.

The exact same functionality can be used with slightly different syntax:

cs
using var host = await Host.CreateDefaultBuilder()
    .ConfigureServices(services =>
    {
        // More service registrations like this is a real app!
    })
    .UseResourceSetupOnStartup()
    .StartAsync();

snippet source | anchor

Or, you can only have this applied when the system is running in "Development" mode:

cs
using var host = await Host.CreateDefaultBuilder()
    .ConfigureServices(services =>
    {
        // More service registrations like this is a real app!
    })
    .UseResourceSetupOnStartupInDevelopment()
    .StartAsync();

snippet source | anchor

At Testing Time

There are some extension methods on IHost in the Oakton.Resources namespace that you may find helpful at testing or development time:

cs
public static async Task usages_for_testing(IHost host)
{
    // Programmatically call Setup() on all resources
    await host.SetupResources();
    
    // Maybe between integration tests, clear any
    // persisted state. For example, I've used this to 
    // purge Rabbit MQ queues between tests
    await host.ResetResourceState();

    // Tear it all down!
    await host.TeardownResources();
}

snippet source | anchor

"resources" Command

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The list option was added in Oakton 4.6.0.

Because Oakton is primarily about command line usage, you can of course interact with your stateful resources through the command line using the resources command that's automatically added with Oakton usage. If you'll type dotnet run -- help resources at the command line of your application, you'll get this output:

bash
resources - Check, setup, or teardown stateful resources of this system
├── Ensure all stateful resources are set up
   └── dotnet run -- resources
       ├── [-t, --timeout <timeout>]
       ├── [-t, --type <type>]
       ├── [-n, --name <name>]
       ├── [-e, --environment <environment>]
       ├── [-v, --verbose]
       ├── [-l, --log-level <loglevel>]
       └── [----config:<prop> <value>]
└── Execute an action against all resources
    └── dotnet run -- resources clear|teardown|setup|statistics|check|list
        ├── [-t, --timeout <timeout>]
        ├── [-t, --type <type>]
        ├── [-n, --name <name>]
        ├── [-e, --environment <environment>]
        ├── [-v, --verbose]
        ├── [-l, --log-level <loglevel>]
        └── [----config:<prop> <value>]


                              Usage   Description
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
                             action   Resource action, default is setup
          [-t, --timeout <timeout>]   Timeout in seconds, default is 60
                [-t, --type <type>]   Optionally filter by resource type
                [-n, --name <name>]   Optionally filter by resource name
  [-e, --environment <environment>]   Use to override the ASP.Net Environment name
                    [-v, --verbose]   Write out much more information at startup and enables console logging
       [-l, --log-level <loglevel>]   Override the log level
        [----config:<prop> <value>]   Overwrite individual configuration items

You've got a couple of options. First, to just see what resources are registered in your system, use:

bash
dotnet run -- resources list

To simply check on the state of each of the resources, use:

bash
dotnet run -- resources check

To set up all resources, use:

bash
dotnet run -- resources setup

Likewise, to teardown all resources:

bash
dotnet run -- resources teardown

Or clear any existing state:

bash
dotnet run -- resources clear

Or finally just to see any statistics:

bash
dotnet run -- resources statistics