Breeze.Sharp Cannot Import Metadata from Breeze Server for ASP.NET Core 3

Question

I am trying to use breeze sharp with Blazor Webassembly. I have been able to recompile breeze sharp for .Net Standard 2.0 and 2.1 that has shown positive results reading data from the server. However when trying to load Metadata from script I have noticed that MetadaStore.ImportMetadata method fails to load metadata. When I followed up I found that there Breeze.Sharp expects metadataVersion property and namingConvention node from the metadata json returned by the breeze server.

What I can see is that First the metadata format has changed and those properties are no longer present in the generated metadata. But if I FetchMetadata using DataService then the metadata is loaded into the metadatastore.

My Question is ...Is there a plan to update breeze sharp to be aligned with recent developments in the dotnet platform? Kindly consider it as it aligns very well with Blazor. Actually my experiment went very fine expect for loading metadata stored locally instead of loading it from the server every time.

  private void DeserializeFrom(JNode jNode, bool isFromServer) {
  MetadataVersion = jNode.Get<String>("metadataVersion");
  // may be more than just a name

  var ncNode = jNode.GetJNode("namingConvention");
  if (ncNode != null) {
    var nc = Configuration.Instance.FindOrCreateNamingConvention(ncNode);
    if (nc == null) {
      OnMetadataMismatch(null, null, MetadataMismatchTypes.MissingCLRNamingConvention, ncNode.ToString());
    } else {
      // keep any preexisting ClientServerNamespaceMap info
      NamingConvention = nc.WithClientServerNamespaceMapping(this.NamingConvention.ClientServerNamespaceMap);
    }
  }

  // localQueryComparisonOptions
  jNode.GetJNodeArray("dataServices").Select(jn => new DataService(jn)).ForEach(ds => {
    if (GetDataService(ds.ServiceName) == null) {
      AddDataService(ds);
    }
  });
  jNode.GetJNodeArray("structuralTypes")
    .ForEach(jn => UpdateStructuralTypeFromJNode(jn, isFromServer));

  jNode.GetMap<String>("resourceEntityTypeMap").ForEach(kvp => {
    var stName = kvp.Value;
    if (isFromServer) {
        stName = TypeNameInfo.FromStructuralTypeName(stName).ToClient(this).StructuralTypeName;
    }
    // okIfNotFound because metadata may contain refs to types that were already excluded earlier in
    // UpdateStructuralTypeFromJNode
    var et = GetEntityType(stName, true);
    if (et != null) {
      SetResourceName(kvp.Key, et);
    }
  });
}

Answer 1

I have been following up very closely new developments and this is what I have noticed so far.

1. Microsoft is reviving the product called Microsoft Restier. First it was developed on the .Net Framework Platform but now they are rewriting it to run on the .Net Core and is expected to go RTM in the first half 0f the year 2020. A good thing about this Microsoft Restier is that your Full Entity Context is exposed as OData endpoint with your entity lists exposed without the need for creating Controllers on Actions. This way it reduces the tedious work of writing an action for each entity that you want to expose as an OData resource different from the current case with plain OData and Breeze Server. There are so many areas for configurations and extensibility.

2. Microsoft is remaking RIA Data Services in the form of OData Connected Service. This creates a Proxy in the same way as RIA Data Services. With the Proxy generated there is no need to create a client data model. The model created on the server will suffice... not as the case for breeze sharp where you need to create a model on the client although there are signs that at DevForce they are exploring using PostSharp to make it possible to use POCO objects sharable between breeze server and clients. We however do not know when will this be available.

3. OData Connected Service works seamlessly with Blazor Server (On the Client Side there some bugs that are being worked on ) and removes the headache of working with bare bone HttpClient.

4. As for breeze sharp it currently works well with both Blazor Server and Web Assembly versions (Breeze Sharp Standard). I think they will rework their product and enable it to work with OData the same way Breezejs does. This combined with Microsoft.Restier will make life very easy. Actually breeze has very nice features especially when it comes to caching.

Lets wait and see.