CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.netcode-generation
Jonathan Holland
Jonathan Holland

Reputation: 1281

Open Source Library for generating concrete types from interfaces during runtime?

I'm working on something that needs to take in a contract (specified as an interface), and create a instance on the fly, without any formally defined concrete class that meets this interface.

An example of the syntax is like this:

IExampleMessage message = MessageBuilder.Create<IExampleMessage>(x => {
   x.PropertyA = "Test";
   x.PropertyB = 5;
});

I've seen other .NET libraries and frameworks offer behavior like this (NServiceBus comes to mind), and I'm wondering if there is a 3rd party library that abstracts the runtime code gen away. I thought Castle DynamicProxy would be a place to look, but this seems focused entirely on proxying and intercepting, and does not seem to expose the code generation aspect.

I could write up a implementation that uses Reflection.Emit to create the class on the fly, however I'd rather use a solid open source library if one exists.

Any suggestions?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 232

Answers (2)

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Reputation: 39277

Impromptu interface is what you need:- http://code.google.com/p/impromptu-interface/

I've used it to create polymorphic types in .NET.

You could also look at Clay.

Upvotes: 2

Preet Sangha
Preet Sangha

Reputation: 65496

What about the mocking libraries - NMock, and RhinoMocks?

You can add implementations to the concrete types using stubs/expectations as well.

Rhino in particular has a nice lambda based syntax for the kind of thing that you want.

Does this not full fill your needs?

Something like this?

IExampleMessage message = MockRepository.GenerateStub<IExampleMessage>();
message .Stub(x => x.PropertyA).Return("Text")    
message .Stub(x => x.PropertyB).Return(5)

Upvotes: 1

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