Demonstrates how we do some of the object conversion stuff in Dovetail using FubuMVC

ObjectConverterStuff.cs

// In a StructureMap registry somewhere (for us, it's in CoreRegistry.cs)
For<IObjectConverter>().Use<DovetailObjectConverter>();


// In another file, we set up some of our conversions and conversion families
public class DovetailObjectConverter : ServiceEnabledObjectConverter
{
    public DovetailObjectConverter(IServiceLocator locator)
        : base(locator)
    {

        // We use UTC for all DateTimes. When they come in from the user,
        // we immediately convert them from user local timezone to UTC
        // This is to prevent brain-bending timezone conversion math
        // from being scattered throughout our code base.
        RegisterConverter<DateTime, ITimeZoneContext>((context, text) =>
        {
            var localDate = (DateTime)Convert.ChangeType(text, typeof(DateTime));
            return localDate.ToUniversalTime(context.GetTimeZone());
        });

        // This is what Dru was asking about on the list. When an entity is
        // is required, the value in the HTTP Request is a string that contains
        // the GUID identifier of the entity (the entity type is already known
        // or inferred from elsewhere). The code for the DomainEntityConverterFamily
        // is located below.
        RegisterConverterFamily<DomainEntityConverterFamily>();

        // This is a one-off converter for TimeSpan objects represented in string form
        // coming up from the browser. 
        RegisterConverter<TimeSpan>(x =>
        {
            var returnValue = new TimeSpan();
            return TimeSpan.TryParse(x, out returnValue) ? returnValue : TimeSpan.Zero;
        });
    }
}   



// This is how we convert a string GUID into a domain entity for model binding
// in an action:
public class DomainEntityConverterFamily : IObjectConverterFamily
{
    private readonly IRepository _repository;

    public DomainEntityConverterFamily(IRepository repository)
    {
        _repository = repository;
    }

    // Matches any type deriving from DomainEntity
    // CanBeCastTo<> is an extension method in FubuCore as well
    public bool Matches(Type type, IObjectConverter converter)
    {
        return type.CanBeCastTo<DomainEntity>();
    }

    // In this case we find the correct object by looking it up by Id
    // from our repository
    public Func<string, object> CreateConverter(Type type, Cache<Type, Func<string, object>> converters)
    {
        return text =>
        {
            var guid = new Guid(text);
            return _repository.Find(type, guid);
        };
    }
}