Zen and the art of Castle maintenance

So here’s a brief list of what has changed since RC2. The full list is bundled with the .msi installer, and are kept on the release notes folder.

ActiveRecord

• Multiple db support without the need to extend ARBase
• Refactored validation support to use the new Castle Validation
• InPlaceConfigurationSource.Build() which is handy!
• Added HqlNamedQuery
• Lots of bug fixes

DynamicProxy

The RC3 is the first to include DynamicProxy 2 which has support for generics and is much much faster than version 1

MicroKernel/Windsor

• Support for generic collections
• Changed to use DynamicProxy 2
• Added some sugar to IKernel and IWindsorContainer add/resolve methods
• Child container support was improved, but still need some review – you’ve been warned
• Added a simplistic eval support, you can do <?eval $BaseDirectory ?> on your config
• Both DefaultKernel and WindsorContainer now implement IServiceProvider

MonoRail

• Added Cache support (see the new Cache attribute)
• Added IsPost/IsGet/IsPut/IsHead to Controller
• Added Auto Form Validation
• FormHelper is nearly perfection, still missing support for selects with multiple enabled
• Support to register several view engines at once (bye composite view engine) – this is not as good as I’d like it to be. There’s no co-op among them..
• Added handful of view components
• Added support to test controllers, viewcomponents, wizard steps without the need to bring the ASP.Net to the table
• Added JS generation support, and UpdatePage/UpdatePageTag view components
• Format support on set operations, for example $Form.Select(“price”, [1..100], “%{textformat=’C'}”) is going to render the select elements with currency format
• Added PaginationHelper.CreateCustomPage which is the most optimized way to deal with pagination
• Added DiggStylePagination ViewComponent, based on Alex Henderson work
• Added the following members to SmartDispatcherController (validation related) ValidationSummaryPerInstance : IDictionary, GetErrorSummary(object instance) : ErrorSummary, HasValidationError(object instance) : bool
• Added ViewComponentDetails attribute (just like ControllerDetails)
• Added ViewComponentParam attribute which tells MonoRail to bind the arguments as properties on your view component – reducing repetitive code rules
• Added UrlHelper/UrlBuilder concept

Aspect#

Is out…

Components

• Added Castle.Validator
• Added Castle.DictionaryAdapter – still puzzled by this one
• Improved Binder (another re-write of its implementation)

Other

• Created the using.castleproject.org
• Created the api.castleproject.org
• Initial integration between the Castle.Services.Transaction with MS’ System.Transactions
• Created Castle.Core

Well, basically that was it. We’ve been busy.