Object Property Rule Engine and Compliance Checker

This .NET Standard 2.0 library is a rules engine that allows for evaluating property values of objects for compliance with a set of rules.

It was originally designed to run rules checks against various objects in the System.Data namespace. However, it can evaluate properties of any object.

NuGet Package

This library is available as a compiled package is on Nuget.org

https://www.nuget.org/packages/ObjectPropertyRuleEngine/

Feedback

If you want to provide feedback, report a bug or make a suggestion, you can either:

1. Add a bug/issue/ticket to our BACKLOG.md and open a pull reuqest
2. Make the change yourself and open a pull request.

Usage Example

using System;
using System.Data;
using ObjectPropertyRuleEngine;

namespace NadsComplianceExample
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string logicalName = "Hearing Office";
            string physicalName = "HOFC";

            RuleEngine e = new RuleEngine();
            e.LoadRulesetFromYamlFileUrl("/RuleSets/01-primary.YAML");

            DataTable dt = new DataTable();
            DataColumn col = dt.AddNewDataColumnWithExtendedProperties(logicalName, physicalName, "char(11)");

            RuleSetCheckResult ruleEngineResult = e.RunRuleSetAgainstObject(col);

            Console.WriteLine(ruleEngineResult.ResultText);

            Console.WriteLine();
            Console.WriteLine("Tests Passed");
            foreach (var item in ruleEngineResult.RuleCheckResults_Passed)
                Console.WriteLine($"{item.Rule.Description} \n\t {item.ResultText}");

            Console.WriteLine();
            Console.WriteLine("Tests Failed");
            foreach (var item in ruleEngineResult.RuleCheckResults_Failed)
                Console.WriteLine($"{item.Rule.Description} \n\t {item.ResultText}");

            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
}

Output

HOFC Applicable:  3/47 | Passed: 1/3

Tests Passed
All attributes with a textual datatype must define the datatype length
         PASS: ([DatatypeLength][Is greater than][0])

Tests Failed
All attributes must be defined.
         Expected: ([Definition][IsNot][])
All logical names are expected to end with a class term, or a combination thereof, that semantically represents the data type of a data element.
         Expected: ([LogicalName][EndsWithAny][File;Line 4;Line 3;Line 2;Line 1;Line;Code;Address;Year;Timestamp;Time;Text;Switch;Rate;Percent;Number;Name;Indicator;Identifier;Description;Date;Count;Amount])

Architecture

Classes

RuleEngine

This is the main container. Has methods to load a RuleSet from a YAML string or URL. It's main method RunRuleSetAgainstObject is designed to accept objects from the System.Data namespace, however it really accepts an object of any type. The RunRuleSetAgainstObject method returns a RuleSetCheckResult object which contains results of evaluating the collection of Rule objects in the loaded RuleSet.

RuleSet

A RuleSet is a named collection of Rule objects.

Rule

A Rule is made up of an Antecedent and a Consequent. An Antecedent is the "if" part of a logical expression. A Consequent is the "then" part of a logical expresion. For example, given this expression:

If a logical name ends with Name, then the datatype length should be greater than 10

Antecedent: A logical name ends with Name Consequent: The datatype length should be greater than 10

Both the Antecedent and Consequent properties are both RuleExpressionGroup object types.

RuleExpressionGroup

Represents 1 or many RuleExpressions and RuleExpressionGroups grouped together by a LogicOperator of either And or Or. A RuleExpressionGroup can be evaluated against a data structure object. This structure allows for implementing complex, nested And/Or logic. For example, you can solve the equivalent of the below with eq# representing differentRuleExpression objects:

 ((((eq1 OR eq2) OR (eq3 AND eq4 AND eq5)) AND eq6 AND eq7 AND (eq8 OR eq9)) OR eq10)

View the example on this unit test: ComplexNestedRuleExpressionGroupTest()

RuleExpression

Represents a single logical expression to be compared against a System.Data object's property. It has one public method Evaluate() which returns a boolean. A RuleExpression can be evaluated against a data structure object. A rule expression logically represents this structure: {PropertyName} {ComparisonCondition} {Value}

• "LogicalName" "EndsWith" "Timestamp"
• "ColumnName.Length" "IsLessThan" 18
• "" "Is" "Joseph" *if the property is empty, the object itself will be evaluated (use case: primitive datatypes)

RuleSetCheckResult

This class conatains a four collections of RuleCheckResult objects as properties. These are populated when a RuleSet is evaluated against an object.:

1. RuleCheckResults_Passed
2. RuleCheckResults_Failed
3. RuleCheckResults_NotApplicable
4. RuleCheckResults_Errored

RuleCheckResult

This class represents the results of evaluating one Rule against one object. It tells if the Rule applies to the object passed by evaluating the Rule.Antecedent and populating the AntecedentEvaluatesToTrue property. If the AntecedentEvaluatesToTrue is true, then Rule.Consequent is evaluated and the ConsequentEvaluatesToTrue will be populated. If the AntecedentEvaluatesToTrue is false , then the ConsequentEvaluatesToTrue will be left null.