Why the Repository Pattern

Published on May 20, 2013 by Jamie Munro

After the incredible reaction to a recent blog post, Entity Framework Beginner’s Guide Done Right, I feel like before writing some more code to further the basic example, I’ll take a step back and explain my beliefs in the repository pattern.

I was really overwhelmed with the reaction; what started with a simple 30 minute blogging effort has turned into something absolutely incredible.  The original post was really a starting point about not placing direct querying and saving to the database mingled with the core code.

Please note, these are my thoughts on the pattern based on current and previous pain points that I’ve/am experiencing and I’d love to hear others input in making things better.

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Tags: ASP.NET | Theory | c# | entity framework | repository

Why is my calendar always full?

Published on May 15, 2013 by Jamie Munro

Curse you full calendar!  I find it impossible to get anything accomplished when most of my day is spent in meetings.  More importantly, meetings with the “big wigs” always seem to be the worse.  Really, we need to spend 30 minutes to review a three page Word document that we could have read before the meeting!

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Tags: Rants | meetings | rants

Simple Things Make Me Happy

Published on May 14, 2013 by Jamie Munro

I often go to a drive-thru, whether it’s to order food or my favorite coffee, whenever I finish ordering I always say “Thank you”.  I think this is an important thing to do.  What makes me really happy is the 1 out of 5 (maybe 10) times the person says “You’re welcome”.

This simple statement makes me happy; it’s a really great way to start my day.

There are of course many other examples of simple things that make me happy, as a parent for example, I watch my kids on an almost daily (even hourly) basis learn new things.  This is turn makes me really happy and it’s always the simplest things that they learn.

I feel like this is an important trait that also applies to the world I live in: web application or web game development.  Simple things make me happy.

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Tags: Theory | simple | less is more

Entity Framework Beginner’s Guide Done Right

Published on May 13, 2013 by Jamie Munro

Entity framework is a great ORM provided by Microsoft.  There are a ton of examples of how to get up and running with it really quickly.  The only problem with all of them, is the get you off on the wrong foot.

In all of the EF example guides, the DbContext class is typically deeply embedded into the core of your code.  This of course is great for Entity framework because the effort to change will be next to impossible – speaking from experience of course here.

Instead, by making some subtle changes we can integrate Entity framework in a separate layer in case at some later date you wish to replace it.  Of course, you might never need to replace it, but following these simple techniques will allow better segregation of code and even provide simpler unit testing.

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Tags: ASP.NET | Theory | c# | entity framework

Why Java Makes Me Tremble In My Boots

Published on May 6, 2013 by Jamie Munro

Let me begin by saying that I have not spent a lot of time in Java.  I learned it in college (some 12 years ago) and I’ve used it sparingly throughout my development career.  To date I’ve never done a full project using only Java.  And ironically, one of the main reasons I haven’t is I don’t know where to start…

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Tags: php | Theory | c# | Java | java | comparision

Compelling Interview Questions

Published on Apr 25, 2013 by Jamie Munro

Recent Guest Posts on PHPMaster.com

Published on Jan 7, 2013 by Jamie Munro

2012 Year in Review

Published on Dec 21, 2012 by Jamie Munro

Google Event Tracking

Published on Oct 5, 2012 by Jamie Munro

My First Node Application

Published on Oct 4, 2012 by Jamie Munro

Regular Expressions with Mysql

Published on Oct 2, 2012 by Jamie Munro

Mysql Uptime Check Script

Published on Oct 1, 2012 by Jamie Munro

Renaming a Database in Mysql

Published on Sep 28, 2012 by Jamie Munro

Using Jquery to Check a Checkbox

Published on Sep 27, 2012 by Jamie Munro

A Fancier Twitter Timeline

Published on Sep 25, 2012 by Jamie Munro

Upgrading my Blog - The Final Saga!

Published on Sep 24, 2012 by Jamie Munro

The Best Way to Prevent SQL Injection

Published on Sep 19, 2012 by Jamie Munro

CakePHP 2.x Login System

Published on Sep 18, 2012 by Jamie Munro

Load Testing Mysql with mysqlslap

Published on Sep 17, 2012 by Jamie Munro

A Short Rant About Coding Conventions

Published on Sep 13, 2012 by Jamie Munro

What I Learned This Summer

Published on Sep 7, 2012 by Jamie Munro

It's LEMP not LAMP!

Published on Sep 6, 2012 by Jamie Munro

Amazon EC2 Shoutout!

Published on Sep 5, 2012 by Jamie Munro

PHP: Require/Include vs Autoloader

Published on Aug 29, 2012 by Jamie Munro

2011: Year in Review

Published on Jan 2, 2012 by Jamie Munro

MVC 3 Routing Example

Published on Oct 17, 2011 by Jamie Munro

20 Recipes for Programming MVC 3

Published on Oct 12, 2011 by Jamie Munro

Officially published my CakePHP Book

Published on May 19, 2011 by Jamie Munro

AJAX Star Rating Plugin For CakePHP

Published on Mar 2, 2011 by Jamie Munro

IBM's Watson On Jeopardy!

Published on Feb 16, 2011 by Jamie Munro

Publishing an e-book on Smashwords

Published on Feb 7, 2011 by Jamie Munro

CakePHP 2.0 Rant Retraction

Published on Feb 1, 2011 by Jamie Munro

CakePHP 2.0 Rant

Published on Jan 31, 2011 by Jamie Munro

Random Funny Technology Videos

Published on Jan 27, 2011 by Jamie Munro

Using the TextHelper with CakePHP

Published on Jan 24, 2011 by Jamie Munro

Maintaining the back button with AJAX

Published on Dec 28, 2010 by Jamie Munro

AJAX, can there be too much?

Published on Dec 22, 2010 by Jamie Munro

Making Money With Flash Games

Published on Jun 27, 2010 by Jamie Munro

iPhone Apps Randomly Crashing?

Published on Feb 4, 2010 by Jamie Munro

Optimizing CakePHP Websites

Published on Jan 20, 2010 by Jamie Munro

Adding SEO functionality

Published on Nov 15, 2009 by Jamie Munro

unbindModel and $this->paginate()

Published on Aug 20, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Someone at work tick you off?

Published on Jul 28, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Follow me on Twitter

Published on Jun 19, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Sharing your way to success

Published on Jun 6, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Photobucket, Photos, and You

Published on May 23, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Facebook, Photos, and You!

Published on May 18, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Creating your first iGoogle Gadget

Published on May 12, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Bebo Development Scares Me

Published on May 7, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Caching Queries in CakePHP

Published on Apr 25, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Understanding group bys

Published on Apr 18, 2009 by Jamie Munro

ActivityIndicator with a UIWebView

Published on Apr 15, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Custom pagination query in CakePHP

Published on Apr 13, 2009 by Jamie Munro

3 Flaws to CakePHP's AuthComponent

Published on Apr 10, 2009 by Jamie Munro

The flaws of using isset()

Published on Apr 8, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Reset UINavigationController

Published on Apr 6, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Scroll a UIWebView

Published on Apr 4, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Transparent UIWebView

Published on Apr 2, 2009 by Jamie Munro

A friendly framework reminder

Published on Apr 1, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Web Developers are Warriors

Published on Mar 30, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Unbind Model Validation in CakePHP

Published on Mar 28, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Jquery vs Prototype/Scriptaculous

Published on Mar 26, 2009 by Jamie Munro

How attentive are you?

Published on Mar 25, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Re-map key/value array data in PHP

Published on Mar 19, 2009 by Jamie Munro

How to deal with stress at work

Published on Mar 17, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Underscores and Internet Explorer Fun

Published on Mar 13, 2009 by Jamie Munro

How to advance our CMS in CakePHP

Published on Mar 8, 2009 by Jamie Munro

How to create a CMS with CakePHP

Published on Mar 7, 2009 by Jamie Munro

AJAX Select box in CakePHP

Published on Mar 6, 2009 by Jamie Munro

How to setup a route in CakePHP

Published on Mar 5, 2009 by Jamie Munro

A practical CASE Statement Example

Published on Mar 4, 2009 by Jamie Munro

The Importance of Database Indexing

Published on Feb 27, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Dynamic COUNT() Versus Static COUNT()

Published on Feb 24, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Why You Should Always Backup

Published on Feb 22, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Why Frameworks Are Better

Published on Feb 17, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Why Is Internet Explorer Better?

Published on Feb 15, 2009 by Jamie Munro

Drag and Drop with AJAX Example

Published on Feb 14, 2009 by Jamie Munro

SQL Tips - Why LEFT JOINS are bad

Published on Feb 13, 2009 by Jamie Munro