Add-Allowable-Parents-to-an-Entity-Description.md

Add Allowable Parents to an Entity Description

You can enforce hierarchical rules for your experiment entities by defining allowable parent types in your source and epoch group descriptions. For instance, if you have "Subject", "Preparation", and "Cell" source descriptions you may not want to allow nesting a "Subject" within a "Cell" or a "Preparation".

This tutorial shows how to add allowable parents to an EntityDescription.

• Step 1: Create two source descriptions
• Step 2: Add allowable parents

Step 1: Create two source descriptions

Create two source descriptions called "Subject" and "Cell" so you have something to work with.

classdef Subject < symphonyui.core.persistent.descriptions.SourceDescription

    methods

        function obj = Subject()
            obj.addProperty('id', '');
        end

    end

end

classdef Cell < symphonyui.core.persistent.descriptions.SourceDescription

    methods

        function obj = Cell()
            obj.addProperty('type', '');
        end

    end

end

Step 2: Add allowable parents

Add an allowable parent type of empty (i.e. allow no parent) to the "Subject" description by adding a line calling the addAllowableParentType() method.

obj.addAllowableParentType([]);

Add an allowable parent type of "Subject" to the "Cell" description by adding a line calling the addAllowableParentType() method.

obj.addAllowableParentType('edu.washington.riekelab.sources.Subject');

Note: You will need to replace "edu.washington.riekelab.sources." with your own package prefix.

The two descriptions now define one allowable parent type each.

classdef Subject < symphonyui.core.persistent.descriptions.SourceDescription

    methods

        function obj = Subject()
            obj.addProperty('id', '');
            obj.addAllowableParentType([]);
        end

    end

end

classdef Cell < symphonyui.core.persistent.descriptions.SourceDescription

    methods

        function obj = Cell()
            obj.addProperty('type', '');
            obj.addAllowableParentType('edu.washington.riekelab.sources.Subject');
        end

    end

end

If you now attempt to add a source to an experiment, Symphony will only allow adding a "Subject" source at the top level and a "Cell" source below it.