It is common for every table to have a common set of audit tracking fields such as DateLastModified, UserIdLastModified, etc.

In our entities, this is easily supported by having these properties defined in a base class that every entity derives from.

This has always been somewhat cumbersome from a mapping perspective. Using classic hbm mapping files there is no way to inherit such details and they had to be repeated for each mapping.

One of the many benefits that Fluent NHibernate brings to the table is a much better solution to this.

We can define an AuditMapping base class and derive our mapping classes from it and not have to duplicate the mapping of common fields.

public class AuditMap<T> : ClassMap<T> where T : IEntity

{

public AuditMap()

{

Map(p => p.DateEffective);

Map(p => p.DateExpiry);

Map(p => p.DateLastModified);

Map(p => p.TypeIdModifierOrigin);

Map(p => p.UserIdLastModifier);

}

}

You just need to constrain T to require that it implements an interface common to all Entities or be derived from the base class for all entities.

This proves to be a nice way to standardize mapping and simplify the process of actually mapping the classes.

Is anyone else using any similar techniques?