Azure Mobile Services (Windows Phone) - store complex object - json

Question

I am playing around with Azure Mobile Services. Right now I am trying to store an object of my custom class in a table.
Here is a snippet from the class which represent the object which I want to store in Azure.
public class CustomItem : INotifyPropertyChanged
{
public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;
public string Id { get; set; }
[JsonProperty(PropertyName = "Categorie")]
public CategorieObject Categorie { get; set; }
[JsonProperty(PropertyName = "Subcategorie")]
public SubcategorieObject Subcategorie { get; set; }
[JsonProperty(PropertyName = "Name")]
public string Name { get; set; }
...
}
My question is how to store custom types like CategorieObject or SubCategorieObject. These classes contain a String for the name and many other properties, but I only need to store the name of the Categorie and SubcategorieObject.
Maybe you can give me a hint, to solve my problem.
Thanks!

Answer 1

The post at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/carlosfigueira/archive/2012/09/06/supporting-arbitrary-types-in-azure-mobile-services-managed-client-complex-types.aspx shows one way to support complex objects in azure mobile service. For your scenario, you can send the data to the server and in the insert/read/update scripts you "change" the data to only store what you need. For example, assuming that you have those types on the client:
public class CustomItem : INotifyPropertyChanged
{
public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;
public string Id { get; set; }
[JsonProperty(PropertyName = "Categorie")]
public CategorieObject Categorie { get; set; }
[JsonProperty(PropertyName = "Subcategorie")]
public SubcategorieObject Subcategorie { get; set; }
[JsonProperty(PropertyName = "Name")]
public string Name { get; set; }
}
public class CategorieObject
{
[JsonProperty(PropertyName = "Name")]
public string Name { get; set; }
[JsonProperty(PropertyName = "SomethingElse")]
public string SomethingElse { get; set; }
}
public class SubcategorieObject
{
[JsonProperty(PropertyName = "Name")]
public string Name { get; set; }
[JsonProperty(PropertyName = "SomethingElse")]
public string SomethingElse { get; set; }
}
You'd change your insert script to replace the complex object (categorie / subcategorie) with the name, which is what you want to store:
function insert(item, user, request) {
// Replace the complex object with their "Name" property.
// Omitting error / format checking here for conciseness.
item.Categorie = item.Categorie.Name;
item.Subcategorie = item.Subcategorie.Name;
request.execute({
success: function() {
// Recreate the original object
item.Categorie = { Name: item.Categorie };
item.Subcategorie = { Name: item.Subcategorie };
request.respond();
}
});
}
Likewise when updating an item you'd need to do the same:
function update(item, user, request) {
// Replace the complex object with their "Name" property.
// Omitting error / format checking here for conciseness.
item.Categorie = item.Categorie.Name;
item.Subcategorie = item.Subcategorie.Name;
request.execute({
success: function() {
// Recreate the original object
item.Categorie = { Name: item.Categorie };
item.Subcategorie = { Name: item.Subcategorie };
request.respond();
}
});
}
And the same for reading:
function read(query, user, request) {
request.execute({
success: function(results) {
results.forEach(function(item) {
item.Categorie = { Name: item.Categorie };
item.Subcategorie = { Name: item.Subcategorie };
});
request.respond();
}
});
}
Notice that any other properties in the subclasses will be lost when reading from the database (after all, you're not storing them).