Entity

Definition of Entities

In contrast to agents, entities are pure objects without a Tick() method. However, entities are also identified by a UUID (Guid) ID and can be included in the model to enter other data that is not directly part of the agent parameterization. Entity are versioned and snapshots are persisted just the same as with agents.

In your model code, add a using Mars.Interfaces.Agents to make the namespace directly available.

using Mars.Interfaces.Agents

Create a class (called e.g., MyEntityType) and implement the IEntity interface

public class MyEntityType : IEntity 
{
    public Guid ID { get; set; }
}

Alternatively you can infer directly from AbstractEntity, available in Mars.Components.Agents.

Registering the type

Entities must be made known in the model, so that they can be initialized by a given simulation configuration. In the entry point Main(), the newly defined entity type must be registered within the ModelDescription.

// Define the description is not already happened
// var description = new ModelDescription();
description.AddEntity<MyEntityType>()

Create instance from input

Entities can be loaded into the model by using the IEntityManager component to create instances by a given key attribute name and the corresponding value.

The IEntityManager component can be resolved using the global simulation container ISimulationContainer. When the AbstractLayer implementation is used (as described in layer definition) the IEntityManager is already accessible. Otherwise the components needs to be resolved as follows:

var manager = container.Resolve<IEntityManager>();

An agent can create concrete entities directly and bind them to itself:

var entity = manager.Create<MyAgentType>("keyField", "keyValue");