Book Image

Metaprogramming in C#

By : Einar Ingebrigtsen
Book Image

Metaprogramming in C#

By: Einar Ingebrigtsen

Overview of this book

Metaprogramming is an advanced technique that helps developers to automate repetitive tasks, generate scalable code, and enhance productivity in software development. Metaprogramming in C# is a comprehensive guide that will help you reap the full potential of metaprogramming in .NET runtime. You’ll start by learning about the .NET runtime environment and how you can use it to become a more productive developer. You'll learn how to infer types using reflection, use attributes, and create dynamic proxies. You’ll also explore the use of expressions to create and execute code and how to take advantage of Dynamic Language Runtime. But that's not all! You’ll also learn to go beyond inheritance and use method signature conventions to create easily maintainable code. Finally, you’ll dive into the world of compiler magic with Roslyn, where you'll discover how to use Roslyn to generate code, perform static code analysis, and write your own compiler extensions. By the end of this book, you’ll have a deep understanding of metaprogramming concepts and how to apply them to your C# code. You’ll be able to think about types, use attributes and expressions to generate code, and apply crosscutting concerns to improve code quality.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
1
Part 1:Why Metaprogramming?
5
Part 2:Leveraging the Runtime
12
Part 3:Increasing Productivity, Consistency, and Quality
18
Part 4:Compiler Magic Using Roslyn

Creating a query engine

Let’s switch gears a little bit and increase the complexity a couple of levels and make it a little bit more relevant. One thing we could use expressions for is as a way to do dynamic querying of data. Some applications might want to even give the end user the ability to create arbitrary queries for your data. I’ve worked on solutions that offered this type of power to the end user, which can be a tough problem to solve if you’re providing a flexible query system for the end user without something such as expressions. I’ve seen solutions that basically just expose SQL directly to the end user instead of trying to tackle this problem. Giving this level of power to the end user can cause problems in the future. What you end up doing is completely obliterating all abstractions between your data storage and your end users. Good luck changing technologies or supporting multiple data storage mechanisms. But luckily, we have the power of...