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

Summary

In this chapter, we explored how to leverage Roslyn compiler extensions for generating code at compile time. We looked at the basics of generating additional code for the compiler. We also looked at how you can leverage the Roslyn source generators to generate files other than C#, which is a powerful technique that can increase productivity and also provide true business value.

You should now have an understanding of what C# code generators are and how you can implement one. And hopefully, you also have a few ideas brewing of what you can use it for.

As I mentioned in the chapter, we use the compiler’s extensibility and ability to generate code to actually generate TypeScript code. This has proven to be a major productivity boost for our developers. There are some code generators already out there that take OpenAPI definitions and convert them into JavaScript or TypeScript, but they’re then limited to what this standard supports. And if you want it to be...