xConnect - xDB Facet Types

Question

In the xConnect model, we have a property with dictionary type and when we try to put it in a lambda expression for some logic it fires back.

Sample Model:

public class eBikeContactFacet : Facet
{
    public DateTime NewsletterChangedOn { get; set; }
    public string SourceOfLead { get; set; }
    public string ContactType { get; set; }
    public Dictionary<string, eBikeTrainingFacet> Trainings { get; set; }
}

How we fetch:

var trainingContacts = client.Contacts.Where(c => c.GetFacet<eBikeContactFacet>() != null && c.GetFacet<eBikeContactFacet>().GlobalBoschID!=null).ToList();                        

It gives me an error System.AggregateException: One or more errors occurred. ---> Sitecore.XConnect.Schema.XdbModelException: Unsupported value type Sitecore.XConnect.Schema.XdbFacetType

Looks like Dictionary is not supported?

Did anyone face this before, kindly help.

Answer 1

Dictionary properties are alllowed. For example EmailAddress is a facet which has next definition:

namespace Sitecore.XConnect.Collection.Model
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Represents a list of email addresses for a <see cref="T:Sitecore.XConnect.Contact" />
    /// </summary>
    [FacetKey("Emails")]
    [Serializable]
    public class EmailAddressList : Facet
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// Default facet key for the EmailAddressList facet.
        /// </summary>
        public const string DefaultFacetKey = "Emails";

        /// <summary>
        /// Gets or sets the alternative email addresses for this contact different than the preferred one. The key defines the identifier for that email address. Examples are "work", "home", or "personal".
        /// </summary>
        /// <value>
        /// The entries.
        /// </value>
        public Dictionary<string, EmailAddress> Others
        {
            get;
            set;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Gets or sets the key related to the preferred address.
        /// </summary>
        /// <value>
        /// The preferred key.
        /// </value>
        public string PreferredKey
        {
            get;
            set;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Gets or sets the preferred email for the contact.
        /// </summary>
        /// <value>
        /// The preferred email.
        /// </value>
        public EmailAddress PreferredEmail
        {
            get;
            set;
        }

Did you deploy your custom model into xConnect ? Does eBikeTrainingFacet class have Serializable Attribute ?

Did you specify your custom facet to be returned with a contact or batch of contacts by passing an array of facet keys into the ContactExpandOptions? like on below example?

var contacts = await client.GetAsync<Contact>(references, new Sitecore.XConnect.ContactExpandOptions(EmailAddressList.DefaultFacetKey, AddressList.DefaultFacetKey));

Answer 2

I know this question has already got an accepted answer, but I recently had the same issue and the solution was a bit different. Note, this only applies if you're using Azure Search for your xDB index.

According to Sitecore's documentation, there are certain methods that aren't supported. In particular:

It is currently not possible to check if a facet is null. For example:

var notWebVisits = client.Interactions.Where(c => c.WebVisit() == null);

My code was similar to yours, where I was checking that the facet existed before looking within it (c => c.GetFacet<eBikeContactFacet>() != null in your example). I found that you don't need to check if the facet is null when doing a search. If we had an actual list of items in memory, checking for null first would avoid exceptions, but since this translates into a search query, it's not needed.

However, I'm not sure how you'd check for your GlobalBoschID value. If it's an integer, you could check to see if it's greater than 0, but if it's a string or a GUID then I'm not sure. The documentation outlines the limitations of searching against different variable types (Note, 9.0.1 and 9.0.2 support different methods).

Oh, and one last thing - I've sometimes run into problems when using Contact.GetFacet<>() without specifying the facet key. Does it help if you use c.GetFacet<eBikeContactFacet>(eBikeContactFacet.DefaultFacetKey)?