ServiceStack - Autoquery & Swapping Client Templates

Question

Using ServiceStack's Autoquery I have a simple Request DTO defined (example below). I would like to swap templates (Layouts) to use a different Razor layout (as per the SS templates swap documentation here)?

Example of Request DTO:

Route("/customers", "GET")]
public class QueryCustomers : QueryDb<FindFilesResponse>
{

}

Example of Layouts: _Layout.cshtml and _PrintFriendly.cshtml templates

For above query I would like to swap layouts at the client level.

Answer 1

All the ClientCanSwapTemplatesAttribute does is populate the IRequest.Items dictionary from the HTTP Request params:

public class ClientCanSwapTemplatesAttribute : RequestFilterAttribute
{
    public override void Execute(IRequest req, IResponse res, object requestDto)
    {
        req.Items["View"] = req.GetParam("View");
        req.Items["Template"] = req.GetParam("Template");
    }
}

So you could choose to do this in a Request Filter, e.g:

RegisterTypedRequestFilter<QueryCustomers>((req, res, dto) =>
{
    req.Items["View"] = req.GetParam("View");
    req.Items["Template"] = req.GetParam("Template");
});

Alternatively in order to be able to use Filter Attributes on AutoQuery Services since they're implementation is auto-generated is to create a Custom AutoQuery implementation, e.g:

[ClientCanSwapTemplates]
public class MyQueryServices : Service
{
    public IAutoQueryDb AutoQuery { get; set; }

    //Override with custom implementation
    public object Any(QueryCustomers query)
    {
        var q = AutoQuery.CreateQuery(query, base.Request);
        return AutoQuery.Execute(request, q);
    }
}

Whilst Filter attributes would also work when annotated on the Request DTO, i,e:

[ClientCanSwapTemplates]
[Route("/customers", "GET")]
public class QueryCustomers { ... }

They're usage is discouraged because they would add dependencies to your Service Model. But another solution could be to add Attributes dynamically in your AppHost constructor, e,g:

public class AppHost : AppHostBase
{
    public AppHost() 
    { 
        typeof(QueryCustomers)
            .AddAttributes(new ClientCanSwapTemplatesAttribute());
    }

    public override void Configure(Container container) { ... }
}