I'm building a new site from scratch and am considering using Fluent NHibernate for my ORM. I think it'll handle everything easily except, possibly, my XML columns. I've never built a site with NHibernate at all (though I've used Hibernate for Java) so consider me a n00b.
Ideally I'd like the XML to be treated as an XElement as Linq-to-SQL does.
Can I do this with (fluent) NHibernate? What if I want to use auto mapping?
You can use the IUserType defined here: https://nhibernate.jira.com/secure/attachment/12905/XmlType.cs
It uses XmlDocument, but you can easily modify it to work with XElement instead.
Update: This has been included in NHibernate 3. Both XmlDocument and XDocument are available.
Since I struggled to find a solution, I'd like to share my solution here (with XDocument instead of XElement, but at least valid for XML columns).
First create this convention;
using System.Xml.Linq;
using FluentNHibernate.Conventions;
using FluentNHibernate.Conventions.AcceptanceCriteria;
using FluentNHibernate.Conventions.Inspections;
using FluentNHibernate.Conventions.Instances;
public class XmlTypeConvention : IUserTypeConvention
{
public void Accept(IAcceptanceCriteria<IPropertyInspector> criteria)
{
criteria.Expect(x => x.Type == typeof(XDocument));
}
public void Apply(IPropertyInstance instance)
{
instance.CustomType<NHibernate.Type.XDocType>();
}
}
Then remember to add the convention;
Conventions.Add<XmlTypeConvention>();
Now, if your domain entity has a XDocument property it will turn into an XML column in the database.
