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Metaprogramming in C#

You're reading from   Metaprogramming in C# Automate your .NET development and simplify overcomplicated code

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Product type Paperback
Published in Jun 2023
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781837635429
Length 352 pages
Edition 1st Edition
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Author (1):
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Einar Ingerbrigsten Einar Ingerbrigsten
Author Profile Icon Einar Ingerbrigsten
Einar Ingerbrigsten
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Table of Contents (25) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Part 1:Why Metaprogramming?
2. Chapter 1: How Can Metaprogramming Benefit You? FREE CHAPTER 3. Chapter 2: Metaprogramming Concepts 4. Chapter 3: Demystifying through Existing Real-World Examples 5. Part 2:Leveraging the Runtime
6. Chapter 4: Reasoning about Types Using Reflection 7. Chapter 5: Leveraging Attributes 8. Chapter 6: Dynamic Proxy Generation 9. Chapter 7: Reasoning about Expressions 10. Chapter 8: Building and Executing Expressions 11. Chapter 9: Taking Advantage of the Dynamic Language Runtime 12. Part 3:Increasing Productivity, Consistency, and Quality
13. Chapter 10: Convention over Configuration 14. Chapter 11: Applying the Open-Closed Principle 15. Chapter 12: Go Beyond Inheritance 16. Chapter 13: Applying Cross-Cutting Concerns 17. Chapter 14: Aspect-Oriented Programming 18. Part 4:Compiler Magic Using Roslyn
19. Chapter 15: Roslyn Compiler Extensions 20. Chapter 16: Generating Code 21. Chapter 17: Static Code Analysis 22. Chapter 18: Caveats and Final Words 23. Index 24. Other Books You May Enjoy

Creating expressions as delegates and executing them

We can think of expressions as methods or functions we can call. They might have parameters or not and they might return results or not. We can represent the expressions as either Action or Func. Both are delegate types found in the System namespace. Action represents a parameter-less action that can, if you need to, return results. While Func represents a function that has one or more parameters and can return a result. Both of these delegate types can take generic parameters representing the input parameter types and the result type.

Delegates are basically just representations of methods. They define a callable signature. We can invoke delegates as methods directly.

With expressions, we can turn them into a callable expression. This is done through Expression.Lambda(). Let’s build on the property assign expression we had earlier:

var parameter = Expression.Parameter(typeof(MyType));
var property = typeof(MyType...
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