26 January 2012
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.
Using this quote when talking about regular expressions is not exactly original, I know but I do have a long-standing mistrust and borderline disdain for regular expressions which may well have a relation to the fact that they are not exactly my forte. But unfortunately they also seem to be frequently used by people whose forte they also are not! Often the times I come across them they don't cover all the edge cases that the writer originally either expected them to or didn't expect at all - and then they sort of mutate over time into barely-readable strings of symbols that are more difficult to comprehend and maintain (and slower) than a set of functionally-equivalent string manipulation procedures. Don't even get me started on the fact that commenting them seems to be bypassed every time.. since the regex itself is so small the comment would dwarf it, and that would be stupid right? Wrong.
Everyone knows the classic email validation example which is frequently brought out as a case against regular expressions but I've got two other stories I suffered through first hand:
I wrote a CSS minimiser for use in a Classic ASP Javascript app some years ago using a regular expression to strip the comments out before further processing was done, thus:
return strContent.replace(/\/\*(.|[\r\n])*?\*\//g, "");
I did my research on the old t'interwebs and this seemed to be well recommended and would do just what I wanted. It worked fine for a few weeks until - out of the blue - IIS was flatlining the CPU and requests were timing out. I don't even remember how we tracked this down but it eventually arose that a stylesheet had an unclosed comment in it. Appending "/**/" to the content before performing the replacement made the problem disappear.
The second example was a component I was given to integrate with at work, part of whose job was to query a Hotel Availability Web Service. The response xml was always passed through a regular expression that would ensure no credit card details appeared in the content. The xml returned often described detailed information from many Suppliers and could be several megabytes of text so when these calls were taking over 60 seconds and pegging the cpu I was told that it must be the weight of data and the deserialisation causing it. Watching the data move back and forth in Fiddler, though, it was clear that these requests would complete in around 6 seconds.. further investigation by the component writer eventually confirmed that the deserialisation took very little time or resources (well, "very little" in relation to a 60 seconds / 100% cpu event) but the regular expression scanning for the card details was creating all the work. The best part being that these response would never contain any credit card details, its just that this expression had been applied to all responses for "consistency".
It could well be argued that none of these cases are really the fault of regular expressions themselves - the email example is misuse of a tool, the CSS comment removal could be the regex engine implementation (possibly?!) and the availability issue was entirely unnecessary work. But the fact that these issues are lurking out there (waiting to strike!) makes me wary - which is not a reason in isolation not to use something, but it definitely makes me think that my understanding not only of how they can be written but the implications of how they will be processed could do with serious improvement. But I think this needs to go for anyone else writing these regular expressions - if you don't know how they're being worked out, how do you know whether or not they'll scale to text more than a few lines long? Will they scale linearly or exponentially or in some completely different manner?? Again, these are not exactly original thoughts and Joel Spolsky's Leaky Abstractions article is basically saying (much more eloquently) that you should understand at least one layer below the current abstraction you're using.
But so many people will tell you that regular expressions are a valuable tool to have on hand. And I've used ISAPI Rewriter before to deal with friendly urls and that was great. (Not that I can say I miss it when I use ASP.Net MVC Routing instead though :) And there are definite occasion where regular expressions look like the ideal tool to use - the ones I "borrowed" to write the CSS minifier in my last post were so convenient and much nicer than the idea of parsing all that content manually. And so I'm off to try and expand my knowledge and experience by extending the minifier to deal with "@import" statements in the stylesheets..
This is what I've cobbled together for now. It probably looks to an experienced regular expression writer like it was written by a noob.. er, yeah, there's a good reason for that! :D And I'm not sure if the way I've tried to combine the various import formats using String.Join makes for more readable code or for code that looks like nonsense. Not to mention that they all start and end exactly the same - is this duplication something I want to hide away (DRY) or will that harm the readability which is also very important??
private static Regex ImportDeclarationsMatcher = new Regex(
String.Join("|", new[]
{
// @import url("test.css") screen;
"@import\\s+url\\(\"(?<filename>.*?)\"\\)\\s*(?<media>.*?)\\s*(?:;|\r|\n)",
// @import url("test.css") screen;
"@import\\s+url\\('(?<filename>.*?)'\\)\\s*(?<media>.*?)\\s*(?:;|\r|\n)",
// @import url(test.css) screen;
"@import\\s+url\\((?<filename>.*?)\\)\\s*(?<media>.*?)\\s*(?:;|\r|\n)",
// @import "test.css" screen;
"@import\\s+\"(?<filename>.*?)\"\\s*(?<media>.*?)\\s*(?:;|\r|\n)",
// @import 'test.css' screen;
"@import\\s+'(?<filename>.*?)'\\s*(?<media>.*?)\\s*(?:;|\r|\n)"
}),
RegexOptions.Compiled | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase
);
/// <summary>
/// This will never return null nor any null instances. The content should be stripped of
/// comments before being passed in since there is no parsing done to ensure that the
/// imports matched exist in active (ie. non-commented-out) declarations.
/// </summary>
public static IEnumerable<StylesheetImportDeclaration> GetImports(string content)
{
if (content == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("content");
if (content.Trim() == "")
return new NonNullImmutableList<StylesheetImportDeclaration>();
// Note: The content needs a line return appending to the end just in case the last line
// is an import doesn't have a trailing semi-colon or line return of its own (the Regex
// won't pick it up otherwise)
var imports = new List<StylesheetImportDeclaration>();
foreach (Match match in ImportDeclarationsMatcher.Matches(content + "\n"))
{
if (match.Success)
{
imports.Add(new StylesheetImportDeclaration(
match.Value,
match.Groups["filename"].Value,
match.Groups["media"].Value
));
}
}
return imports;
}
public class StylesheetImportDeclaration
{
public StylesheetImportDeclaration(
string declaration,
string filename,
string mediaOverride)
{
if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(declaration))
throw new ArgumentException("Null/blank declaration specified");
if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(filename))
throw new ArgumentException("Null/blank filename specified");
Declaration = declaration.Trim();
Filename = filename.Trim();
MediaOverride = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(mediaOverride)
? null
: mediaOverride.ToString();
}
/// <summary>
/// This will never be null or empty
/// </summary>
public string Declaration { get; private set; }
/// <summary>
/// This will never be null or empty
/// </summary>
public string Filename { get; private set; }
/// <summary>
/// This may be null but it will never be empty
/// </summary>
public string MediaOverride { get; private set; }
}
This will hopefully match imports of the various supported formats
@import url("test.css")
@import url("test.css")
@import url(test.css)
@import "test.css"
@import 'test.css'
all terminated with either semi-colons or line returns, all with optional media types / media queries, all with variable whitespace between the elements. That is all done in a lot less code that if I was going to try to parse that content myself. Which is nice!
I think this little foray has been a success! But now I've got the syntax down (for this case at least), I need to stop being a hypocrite and go off and try to find out how exactly these expressions are processed. As far as I know these might run fine on content up to a certain size and then go batshit crazy on anything bigger! Or they might run like finely honed algorithmic masterpieces on anything thrown at them* - I guess I won't know until I find out more!
* No, I don't believe that either! :)
Posted at 22:30
21 January 2012
I've been experimenting with minifying javascript and stylesheet content on-the-fly with an ASP.Net MVC project where different pages may have different combinations of javascript and stylesheets - not just to try to minimise the quantity of data transmitted but because some of the stylesheets may conflict.
If this requirement was absent and all of the stylesheets or javascript files from a given folder could be included, I'd probably wait until this becomes available (I'm sure I read somewhere it would be made available for .Net 4.0 as well, though I'm struggling now to find a link to back that up!) -
New Bundling and Minification Support (ASP.NET 4.5 Series)
However, mostly due to this special requirement (and partly because I'll still be learning thing even if this doesn't turn out being as useful as I'd initially hoped :) I've pushed on with investigation.
I'm going to jump straight to the first code I've got in use. There's a controller..
public class CSSController : Controller
{
public ActionResult Process()
{
var filename = Server.MapPath(Request.FilePath);
DateTime lastModifiedDateOfData;
try
{
var file = new FileInfo(filename);
if (!file.Exists)
throw new FileNotFoundException("Requested file does not exist", filename);
lastModifiedDateOfData = file.LastWriteTime;
}
catch (Exception e)
{
Response.StatusCode = 500;
Response.StatusDescription = "Error encountered";
return Content(
String.Format(
"/* Unable to determine LastModifiedDate for file: {0} [{1}] */",
filename,
e.Message
),
"text/css"
);
}
var lastModifiedDateFromRequest = TryToGetIfModifiedSinceDateFromRequest();
if ((lastModifiedDateFromRequest != null) &&
(Math.Abs(
lastModifiedDateFromRequest.Value.Subtract(lastModifiedDateOfData).TotalSeconds)
< 2))
{
// Add a small grace period to the comparison (if only because
// lastModifiedDateOfLiveData is granular to milliseconds while
// lastModifiedDate only considers seconds and so will nearly
// always be between zero and one seconds older)
Response.StatusCode = 304;
Response.StatusDescription = "Not Modified";
return Content("", "text/css");
}
// Try to retrieve from cache
var cacheKey = "CSSController-" + filename;
var cachedData = HttpContext.Cache[cacheKey] as TextFileContents;
if (cachedData != null)
{
// If the cached data is up-to-date then use it..
if (cachedData.LastModified >= lastModifiedDateOfData)
{
SetResponseCacheHeadersForSuccess(lastModifiedDateOfData);
return Content(cachedData.Content, "text/css");
}
// .. otherwise remove it from cache so it can be replaced with current data below
HttpContext.Cache.Remove(cacheKey);
}
try
{
var content = MinifyCSS(System.IO.File.ReadAllText(filename));
SetResponseCacheHeadersForSuccess(lastModifiedDateOfData);
// Use DateTime.MaxValue for AbsoluteExpiration (since we're considering the
// file's LastModifiedDate we don't want this cache entry to expire
// on a separate time based scheme)
HttpContext.Cache.Add(
cacheKey,
new TextFileContents(filename, lastModifiedDateOfData, content),
null,
DateTime.MaxValue,
System.Web.Caching.Cache.NoSlidingExpiration,
System.Web.Caching.CacheItemPriority.Normal,
null
);
return Content(content, "text/css");
}
catch (Exception e)
{
Response.StatusCode = 500;
Response.StatusDescription = "Error encountered";
return Content("/* Error: " + e.Message + " */", "text/css");
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Try to get the If-Modified-Since HttpHeader value - if not present or not valid
/// (ie. not interpretable as a date) then null will be returned
/// </summary>
private DateTime? TryToGetIfModifiedSinceDateFromRequest()
{
var lastModifiedDateRaw = Request.Headers["If-Modified-Since"];
if (lastModifiedDateRaw == null)
return null;
DateTime lastModifiedDate;
if (DateTime.TryParse(lastModifiedDateRaw, out lastModifiedDate))
return lastModifiedDate;
return null;
}
/// <summary>
/// Mark the response as being cacheable and implement content-encoding requests such
/// that gzip is used if supported by requester
/// </summary>
private void SetResponseCacheHeadersForSuccess(DateTime lastModifiedDateOfLiveData)
{
// Mark the response as cacheable
// - Specify "Vary" "Content-Encoding" header to ensure that if cached by proxies
// that different versions are stored for different encodings (eg. gzip'd vs
// non-gzip'd)
Response.Cache.SetCacheability(System.Web.HttpCacheability.Public);
Response.Cache.SetLastModified(lastModifiedDateOfLiveData);
Response.AppendHeader("Vary", "Content-Encoding");
// Handle requested content-encoding method
var encodingsAccepted = (Request.Headers["Accept-Encoding"] ?? "")
.Split(',')
.Select(e => e.Trim().ToLower())
.ToArray();
if (encodingsAccepted.Contains("gzip"))
{
Response.AppendHeader("Content-encoding", "gzip");
Response.Filter = new GZipStream(Response.Filter, CompressionMode.Compress);
}
else if (encodingsAccepted.Contains("deflate"))
{
Response.AppendHeader("Content-encoding", "deflate");
Response.Filter = new DeflateStream(Response.Filter, CompressionMode.Compress);
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Represent a last-modified-date-marked text file we can store in cache
/// </summary>
[Serializable]
private class TextFileContents
{
public TextFileContents(string filename, DateTime lastModified, string content)
{
if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(filename))
throw new ArgumentException("Null/blank filename specified");
if (content == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("content");
Filename = filename.Trim();
LastModified = lastModified;
Content = content.Trim();
}
/// <summary>
/// This will never be null or empty
/// </summary>
public string Filename { get; private set; }
public DateTime LastModified { get; private set; }
/// <summary>
/// This will never be null but it may be empty if the source file had no content
/// </summary>
public string Content { get; private set; }
}
/// <summary>
/// Simple method to minify CSS content using a few regular expressions
/// </summary>
private string MinifyCSS(string content)
{
if (content == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("content");
content = content.Trim();
if (content == "")
return "";
content = HashSurroundingWhitespaceRemover.Replace(content, "#");
content = ExtraneousWhitespaceRemover.Replace(content, "");
content = DuplicateWhitespaceRemover.Replace(content, " ");
content = DelimiterWhitespaceRemover.Replace(content, "$1");
content = content.Replace(";}", "}");
content = UnitWhitespaceRemover.Replace(content, "$1");
return CommentRemover.Replace(content, "");
}
// Courtesy of http://madskristensen.net/post/Efficient-stylesheet-minification-in-C.aspx
private static readonly Regex HashSurroundingWhitespaceRemover
= new Regex(@"[a-zA-Z]+#", RegexOptions.Compiled);
private static readonly Regex ExtraneousWhitespaceRemover
= new Regex(@"[\n\r]+\s*", RegexOptions.Compiled);
private static readonly Regex DuplicateWhitespaceRemover
= new Regex(@"\s+", RegexOptions.Compiled);
private static readonly Regex DelimiterWhitespaceRemover
= new Regex(@"\s?([:,;{}])\s?", RegexOptions.Compiled);
private static readonly Regex UnitWhitespaceRemover
= new Regex(@"([\s:]0)(px|pt|%|em)", RegexOptions.Compiled);
private static readonly Regex CommentRemover
= new Regex(@"/\*[\d\D]*?\*/", RegexOptions.Compiled);
}
.. and some route configuration:
// Have to set this to true so that stylesheets (for example) get processed rather than
// returned direct
routes.RouteExistingFiles = true;
routes.MapRoute(
"StandardStylesheets",
"{*allwithextension}",
new { controller = "CSS", action = "Process" },
new { allwithextension = @".*\.css(/.*)?" }
);
I've used a very straight-forward minification approach that I borrowed from this fella -
Efficient stylesheet minification in C#
The minified content is cached along with the last-modified-date of the file so that the http headers can be used to prevent unnecessary work (and bandwidth) by returning a 304 ("Not Modified") response (which doesn't require content). When a browser requests a "hard refresh" it will leave this header out of the request and so will get fresh content.
So far there have been no real surprises but I came across a problem for which I'm still not completely sure where to point the blame. When hosted in IIS (but not the "Visual Studio Development [Web] Server" or IIS Express) there would be responses with the minified content returned to "hard refresh" requests that would appear corrupted. Fiddler would pop up a "The content could not be decompressed. The magic number in GZip header is not correct. Make sure you are passing in a GZIP stream" message. If the css file was entered into the url bar in Firefox, it would display "Content Encoding Error".
Successful requests (for example, where the cache is either empty or the file has been modified since the cache entry was recorded), the request and response headers would be of the form:
GET http://www.productiverage.com/Content/Default.css HTTP/1.1
Host: www.productiverage.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:6.0.2) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/6.0.2
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-gb,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Connection: keep-alive
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: public
Content-Type: text/css; charset=utf-8
Last-Modified: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:03:37 GMT
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.0
X-AspNetMvc-Version: 3.0
X-AspNet-Version: 4.0.30319
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:08:55 GMT
Content-Length: 4344
html{background:url("/Content/Images/Background-Repeat.jpg") repeat-x #800C0E}body,td{ ...
while the failing requests would be such:
GET http://www.productiverage.com/Content/Default.css HTTP/1.1
Host: www.productiverage.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:6.0.2) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/6.0.2
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-gb,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Connection: keep-alive
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: public
Content-Type: text/css; charset=utf-8
Content-Encoding: gzip
Last-Modified: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:03:37 GMT
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.0
X-AspNetMvc-Version: 3.0
X-AspNet-Version: 4.0.30319
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:07:52 GMT
Content-Length: 4344
html{background:url("/Content/Images/Background-Repeat.jpg") repeat-x #800C0E}body,td{ ...
The only differences in the request being the cache-disabling "Pragma" and "Cache-Control" headers but in the failing response a "Content-Encoding: gzip" header has been added but the content itself is in its raw form - ie. not gzip'd.
That explains the gzip error - the content is being reported as compressed when in actual fact it isn't!
I presume that the compression settings in IIS are somehow interfering here but unfortunately I've not been able to definitively find the cause or if I should do anything in configuration. My Google-fu is failing me today :(
However, the solution in the above code is to handle the response compression in the CSSController. In the SetResponseCacheHeadersForSuccess method the "Accept-Encoding" request header is tested for gzip and deflate and will return content accordingly by setting the Response.Filter to be either a GZipStream or DeflateStream. This has solved the problem! And so I'm going to leave my root-cause investigation for another day :)
Note: You can find the source code to this in one of my repositories at Bitbucket: The CSS Minifier.
Posted at 16:56
3 January 2012
The last post almost finished off something I originally started back last April and enabled the creation of Compilable Type Converters which take properties from a source type and feed them in as constructor arguments on a destination type.
The only issue I had is that the final code to set up conversions was a bit verbose. To create a Converter from SourceEmployee to DestEmployee -
public class SourceEmployee
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public SourceRole Role { get; set; }
}
public class SourceRole
{
public string Description { get; set; }
}
public class DestEmployee
{
public DestEmployee(string name, DestRole role)
{
Name = name;
Role = role;
}
public string Name { get; private set; }
public DestRole Role { get; private set; }
}
public class DestRole
{
public DestRole(string description)
{
Description = description;
}
public string Description { get; private set; }
}
the following code was required:
var nameMatcher = new CaseInsensitiveSkipUnderscoreNameMatcher();
var roleConverterFactory = new CompilableTypeConverterByConstructorFactory(
new ArgsLengthTypeConverterPrioritiserFactory(),
new CombinedCompilablePropertyGetterFactory(
new ICompilablePropertyGetterFactory[]
{
new CompilableAssignableTypesPropertyGetterFactory(nameMatcher),
new CompilableEnumConversionPropertyGetterFactory(nameMatcher)
}
)
);
var employeeConverterFactory = new CompilableTypeConverterByConstructorFactory(
new ArgsLengthTypeConverterPrioritiserFactory(),
new CombinedCompilablePropertyGetterFactory(
new ICompilablePropertyGetterFactory[]
{
new CompilableAssignableTypesPropertyGetterFactory(nameMatcher),
new CompilableEnumConversionPropertyGetterFactory(nameMatcher),
new CompilableTypeConverterPropertyGetterFactory<SourceRole, DestRole>(
nameMatcher,
roleConverterFactory.Get<SourceRole, DestRole>()
)
}
)
);
var employeeConverter = employeeConverterFactory.Get<SourceEmployee, DestEmployee>();
For more complicated type graphs this could quickly get tiring! What I really wanted to do was this:
var nameMatcher = new CaseInsensitiveSkipUnderscoreNameMatcher();
var converterFactory = new ExtendableCompilableTypeConverterFactory(
nameMatcher,
new ArgsLengthTypeConverterPrioritiserFactory(),
new ICompilablePropertyGetterFactory[]
{
new CompilableAssignableTypesPropertyGetterFactory(nameMatcher),
new CompilableEnumConversionPropertyGetterFactory(nameMatcher)
}
);
converterFactory = converterFactory.CreateMap<SourceRole, DestRole>();
var converter = converterFactory.Get<SourceEmployee, DestEmployee>();
This class basically wraps up the duplication seen above and returns a new ExtendableCompilableTypeConverterFactory instance each time that CreateMap is successfully called, the new instance having a Compilable Property Getter than can support that mapping. If the CreateMap calls was not successful then an exception will be raised - this will be case if there is no constructor on the destination type whose arguments can all be satisfied by properties on the source type (this also covers cases where additional mappings are required for referenced types). This exception is equivalent to the AutoMapperMappingException that AutoMapper throws in similar circumstances.
I'm just going to jump right in with this - if you've been reading this far then this will hold no challenges or surprises.
public class ExtendableCompilableTypeConverterFactory : ICompilableTypeConverterFactory
{
private INameMatcher _nameMatcher;
private ITypeConverterPrioritiserFactory _converterPrioritiser;
private List<ICompilablePropertyGetterFactory> _basePropertyGetterFactories;
private Lazy<ICompilableTypeConverterFactory> _typeConverterFactory;
public ExtendableCompilableTypeConverterFactory(
INameMatcher nameMatcher,
ITypeConverterPrioritiserFactory converterPrioritiser,
IEnumerable<ICompilablePropertyGetterFactory> basePropertyGetterFactories)
{
if (nameMatcher == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("nameMatcher");
if (converterPrioritiser == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("converterPrioritiser");
if (basePropertyGetterFactories == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("basePropertyGetterFactories");
var basePropertyGetterFactoryList = new List<ICompilablePropertyGetterFactory>();
foreach (var basePropertyGetterFactory in basePropertyGetterFactories)
{
if (basePropertyGetterFactory == null)
throw new ArgumentException("Null entry encountered in basePropertyGetterFactories");
basePropertyGetterFactoryList.Add(basePropertyGetterFactory);
}
_nameMatcher = nameMatcher;
_converterPrioritiser = converterPrioritiser;
_basePropertyGetterFactories = basePropertyGetterFactoryList;
_typeConverterFactory = new Lazy<ICompilableTypeConverterFactory>(
getConverterFactory,
true
);
}
private ICompilableTypeConverterFactory getConverterFactory()
{
return new CompilableTypeConverterByConstructorFactory(
_converterPrioritiser,
new CombinedCompilablePropertyGetterFactory(_basePropertyGetterFactories)
);
}
/// <summary>
/// This will return null if a converter could not be generated
/// </summary>
public ICompilableTypeConverterByConstructor<TSource, TDest> Get<TSource, TDest>()
{
return _typeConverterFactory.Value.Get<TSource, TDest>();
}
ITypeConverter<TSource, TDest> ITypeConverterFactory.Get<TSource, TDest>()
{
return Get<TSource, TDest>();
}
/// <summary>
/// This will throw an exception if unable to generate the requested mapping - it will
/// never return null. If the successful, the returned converter factory will be able
/// to convert instances of TSourceNew as well as IEnumerable / Lists of them.
/// </summary>
public ExtendableCompilableTypeConverterFactory CreateMap<TSourceNew, TDestNew>()
{
// Try to generate a converter for the requested mapping
var converterNew = _typeConverterFactory.Value.Get<TSourceNew, TDestNew>();
if (converterNew == null)
throw new Exception("Unable to create mapping");
return AddNewConverter<TSourceNew, TDestNew>(converterNew);
}
/// <summary>
/// Generate a further extended converter factory that will be able to handle conversion
/// of instances of TSourceNew as well as IEnumerable / Lists of them. This will never
/// return null.
/// </summary>
public ExtendableCompilableTypeConverterFactory AddNewConverter<TSourceNew, TDestNew>(
ICompilableTypeConverter<TSourceNew, TDestNew> converterNew)
{
if (converterNew == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("converterNew");
// Create a property getter factory that retrieves and convert properties using this
// converter and one that does the same for IEnumerable properties, where the
// IEnumerables' elements are the types handled by the converter
var extendedPropertyGetterFactories = new List<ICompilablePropertyGetterFactory>(
_basePropertyGetterFactories
);
extendedPropertyGetterFactories.Add(
new CompilableTypeConverterPropertyGetterFactory<TSourceNew, TDestNew>(
_nameMatcher,
converterNew
)
);
extendedPropertyGetterFactories.Add(
new ListCompilablePropertyGetterFactory<TSourceNew, TDestNew>(
_nameMatcher,
converterNew
)
);
// Return a new ExtendableCompilableTypeConverterFactory that can make use of these
// new property getter factories
return new ExtendableCompilableTypeConverterFactory(
_nameMatcher,
_converterPrioritiser,
extendedPropertyGetterFactories
);
}
}
Ok.. except one. I've sprung the ListCompilablePropertyGetterFactory. The ListCompilablePropertyGetter is similar to the CompilableTypeConverterPropertyGetter but will deal with properties and constructor arguments which are IEnumerable<SourceType> and IEnumerable<DestType>, resp.
This means that the ExtendableCompilableTypeConverterFactory setup code above would have worked if the SourceType and DestType were
public class SourceEmployee
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public SourceRole[] Role { get; set; }
}
public class DestEmployee
{
public DestEmployee(string name, IEnumerable<DestRole> role)
{
Name = name;
Role = role;
}
public string Name { get; private set; }
public DestRole Role { get; private set; }
}
as the CreateMap would return a Converter Factory that could map SourceRole to DestRole and IEnumerable<SourceRole> to IEnumerable<DestRole>.
The CreateMap method will try to generate a new Converter and build new Property Getter Factories using that by passing it to AddNewConverter. If you need to add any custom mapping mechanisms then AddNewConverter may be called with an ICompilableTypeConverter.
For example, if our types now looked like
public class SourceEmployee
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
public SourceRole[] Role { get; set; }
}
public class DestEmployee
{
public DestEmployee(string id, string name, IEnumerable<DestRole> role)
{
Id = id;
Name = name;
Role = role;
}
public string Id { get; private set; }
public string Name { get; private set; }
public DestRole Role { get; private set; }
}
then we would need a way to translate int to string when the name matcher identifies the potential "Id" to "id" mapping. We could do that with AddNewConverter and a custom ICompilableTypeConverter implementation -
var nameMatcher = new CaseInsensitiveSkipUnderscoreNameMatcher();
var converterFactory = new ExtendableCompilableTypeConverterFactory(
nameMatcher,
new ArgsLengthTypeConverterPrioritiserFactory(),
new ICompilablePropertyGetterFactory[]
{
new CompilableAssignableTypesPropertyGetterFactory(nameMatcher),
new CompilableEnumConversionPropertyGetterFactory(nameMatcher)
}
);
converterFactory = converterFactory.CreateMap<SourceRole, DestRole>();
converterFactory = converterFactory.AddNewConverter<int, string>(
new CompilableIntToStringTypeConverter()
);
var converter = converterFactory.Get<SourceEmployee, DestEmployee>();
public class CompilableIntToStringTypeConverter : ICompilableTypeConverter<int, string>
{
public string Convert(int src)
{
return src.ToString();
}
public Expression GetTypeConverterExpression(Expression param)
{
if (param == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("param");
return Expression.Call(
param,
typeof(int).GetMethod("ToString", new Type[0])
);
}
}
See, I promised last time that splitting ICompilableTypeConverter away from ICompilableTypeConverterByConstructor at some point! :)
This has all turned into a bit of a saga! The final code for all this can be found at
https://github.com/ProductiveRage/AutoMapper-By-Constructor-1/
I've not done loads of performance testing but the generated Converters have consistently been around 1.1 or 1.2 times as slow as hand-rolled code (ie. approximately the same), not including the work required to generate the Converters. Compared to AutoMapper, this is quite a win (which was what originally inspired me to go on this journey). But out of the box it doesn't support all the many configurations that AutoMapper does! My main use case was to map legacy WebService objects (with parameter-less constructors) onto internal objects (with verbose constructors) which is all done. But there's currently no way to map back.. I think that's something to worry about another day! :)
Posted at 21:52
2 January 2012
To pick up from where I left off in a previous post, I was trying to write something that could automatically generate LINQ Expressions that could translate from (for example) -
public class SourceEmployee
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public SourceRole Role { get; set; }
}
public class SourceRole
{
public string Description { get; set; }
}
to
public class DestEmployee
{
public DestEmployee(string name, DestRole role)
{
Name = name;
Role = role;
}
public string Name { get; private set; }
public DestRole Role { get; private set; }
}
public class DestRole
{
public DestRole(string description)
{
Description = description;
}
public string Description { get; private set; }
}
by applying name matching logic between properties on the source types and constructor arguments on the destination types. Having this all performed by LINQ Expressions should allow the final conversion to be comparatively fast to hand-rolled code.
This was all kicked off initially since I was using AutoMapper for some work and wasn't happy with its approach to mapping to types that have to be initialised with verbose constructors (as opposed to a parameter-less constructor and then the setting of individual properties). This much was achieved and the solution can be found here -
https://github.com/ProductiveRage/AutoMapper-By-Constructor-1/tree/FirstImplementation.
But I wanted to see if I could improve the performance by removing AutoMapper from the equation and using LINQ Expressions.
Where we left the code as of
https://github.com/ProductiveRage/AutoMapper-By-Constructor-1/tree/LinqExpressionPropertyGetters
we had the class
public class CompilableTypeConverterByConstructor<TSource, TDest>
: ITypeConverterByConstructor<TSource, TDest>
{
// ..
private Lazy<Func<TSource, TDest>> _converter;
public CompilableTypeConverterByConstructor(
IEnumerable<ICompilablePropertyGetter> propertyGetters,
ConstructorInfo constructor)
{
// ..
_converter = new Lazy<Func<TSource, TDest>>(generateCompiledConverter, true);
}
public ConstructorInfo Constructor
{
get
{
// ..
}
}
public TDest Convert(TSource src)
{
if (src == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("src");
return _converter.Value(src);
}
private Func<TSource, TDest> generateCompiledConverter()
{
var srcParameter = Expression.Parameter(typeof(TSource), "src");
var constructorParameterExpressions = new List<Expression>();
foreach (var constructorParameter in _constructor.GetParameters())
{
var index = constructorParameterExpressions.Count;
constructorParameterExpressions.Add(
_propertyGetters[index].GetPropertyGetterExpression(srcParameter)
);
}
return Expression.Lambda<Func<TSource, TDest>>(
Expression.New(
_constructor,
constructorParameterExpressions.ToArray()
),
srcParameter
).Compile();
}
}
public interface ITypeConverterByConstructor<TSource, TDest>
{
ConstructorInfo Constructor { get; }
TDest Convert(TSource src);
}
which took a set of "Compilable Property Getters" that matched the arguments for a specified ConstructorInfo
public interface ICompilablePropertyGetter : IPropertyGetter
{
Expression GetPropertyGetterExpression(Expression param);
}
public interface IPropertyGetter
{
Type SrcType { get; }
PropertyInfo Property { get; }
Type TargetType { get; }
object GetValue(object src);
}
and generated an internal conversion using LINQ Expressions.
There were only two Compilable Property Getters - CompilableAssignableTypesPropertyGetter, which would work with property-to-constructor-arguments where no conversion was required (eg. the available property was a string array and the constructor argument was an IEnumerable<string>) and CompilableEnumConversionPropertyGetter, which mapped one enum to another using an INameMatcher implementation. (The enum mapping LINQ Expression is generated by first coming up with a set of mappings and then generating a LINQ Expression consisting of a set of nested "if" statements for each mapped enum value).
public class CompilableAssignableTypesPropertyGetter<TSourceObject, TPropertyAsRetrieved>
: AbstractGenericCompilablePropertyGetter<TSourceObject, TPropertyAsRetrieved>
{
private PropertyInfo _propertyInfo;
public CompilableAssignableTypesPropertyGetter(PropertyInfo propertyInfo)
{
if (propertyInfo == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("propertyInfo");
if (!propertyInfo.DeclaringType.Equals(typeof(TSourceObject)))
throw new ArgumentException("Invalid propertyInfo - DeclaringType must match TSourceObject");
_propertyInfo = propertyInfo;
}
public override PropertyInfo Property
{
get { return _propertyInfo; }
}
public override Expression GetPropertyGetterExpression(Expression param)
{
if (param == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("param");
if (!typeof(TSourceObject).IsAssignableFrom(param.Type))
throw new ArgumentException("param.Type must be assignable to typeparam TSourceObject");
Expression getter = Expression.Property(
param,
_propertyInfo
);
var targetType = typeof(TPropertyAsRetrieved);
if (!targetType.IsAssignableFrom(_propertyInfo.PropertyType))
getter = Expression.Convert(getter, targetType);
if (!targetType.IsValueType && _propertyInfo.PropertyType.IsValueType)
getter = Expression.TypeAs(getter, typeof(object));
return getter;
}
}
public abstract class AbstractGenericCompilablePropertyGetter<TSourceObject, TPropertyAsRetrieved>
: ICompilablePropertyGetter
{
private Lazy<Func<TSourceObject, TPropertyAsRetrieved>> _getter;
public AbstractGenericCompilablePropertyGetter()
{
_getter = new Lazy<Func<TSourceObject, TPropertyAsRetrieved>>(generateGetter, true);
}
public Type SrcType
{
get { return typeof(TSourceObject); }
}
public abstract PropertyInfo Property { get; }
public Type TargetType
{
get { return typeof(TPropertyAsRetrieved); }
}
object IPropertyGetter.GetValue(object src)
{
if (src == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("src");
if (!src.GetType().Equals(typeof(TSourceObject)))
throw new ArgumentException("The type of src must match typeparam TSourceObject");
return GetValue((TSourceObject)src);
}
public TPropertyAsRetrieved GetValue(TSourceObject src)
{
if (src == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("src");
return _getter.Value(src);
}
public abstract Expression GetPropertyGetterExpression(Expression param);
private Func<TSourceObject, TPropertyAsRetrieved> generateGetter()
{
var param = Expression.Parameter(typeof(TSourceObject), "src");
return Expression.Lambda<Func<TSourceObject, TPropertyAsRetrieved>>(
GetPropertyGetterExpression(param),
param
).Compile();
}
}
public interface ICompilablePropertyGetter : IPropertyGetter
{
/// <summary>
/// This Linq Expression will retrieves the value from SrcType.Property as TargetType,
/// the specified "param" Expression must have a type that is assignable to SrcType.
/// </summary>
Expression GetPropertyGetterExpression(Expression param);
}
public interface IPropertyGetter
{
/// <summary>
/// This is the type whose property is being accessed
/// </summary>
Type SrcType { get; }
/// <summary>
/// This is the property on the source type whose value is to be retrieved
/// </summary>
PropertyInfo Property { get; }
/// <summary>
/// This is the type that the property value should be converted to and returned as
/// </summary>
Type TargetType { get; }
/// <summary>
/// Try to retrieve the value of the specified Property from the specified object
/// (which must be of type SrcType)
/// </summary>
object GetValue(object src);
}
and to generate instances of these classes we had some factories (CompilableTypeConverterByConstructorFactory, CompilableAssignableTypesPropertyGetterFactory and CompilableEnumConversionPropertyGetterFactory). These would do the work of examining the properties and constructors of specified source and destination type pairs and determining the best constructor that could be satisfied (if any) with the Compilable Property Getters. The code in these factories is none too exciting.
If the mappings we want to generate are for very simple structures (in this case, "simple" means that all property-to-constructor-argument mappings are either directly assignable-to or are enum mappings) then everything's rosy - eg.
public class SourceEmployee
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public SourceRole Role { get; set; }
}
public enum SourceRole
{
big_boss_man,
worker_bee
}
to
public class DestEmployee
{
public DestEmployee(string name, DestRole role)
{
Name = name;
Role = role;
}
public string Name { get; private set; }
public DestRole Role { get; private set; }
}
public enum DestRole
{
BigBossMan,
WorkerBee
}
(The enum mapping in this example would be handled by specifying a CaseInsensitiveSkipUnderscoreNameMatcher for the CompilableEnumConversionPropertyGetterFactory).
But the problem I opened with does not come under this "simple structure" umbrella as in that case SourceRole and DestRole are types for which we have no Compilable Property Getter! Oh noes!
For inspiration, I go back to AutoMapper since it too can not magically handle nested types -
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
AutoMapper.Mapper.CreateMap<SourceTypeSub1, DestTypeSub1>();
AutoMapper.Mapper.CreateMap<SourceType, DestType>();
var dest = AutoMapper.Mapper.Map<SourceType, DestType>(
new SourceType()
{
Value = new SourceTypeSub1() { Name = "N1" }
}
);
}
}
public class SourceType
{
public SourceTypeSub1 Value { get; set; }
}
public class SourceTypeSub1
{
public string Name { get; set; }
}
public class DestType
{
public DestTypeSub1 Value { get; set; }
}
public class DestTypeSub1
{
public string Name { get; set; }
}
without the CreateMap call for SourceTypeSub1 to DestTypeSub1, the Map call from SourceType to DestType would fail with an AutoMapperMappingException.
Following the same tack, a way to create a new Compilable Property Getter from a CompilableTypeConverterByConstructor (which could then be used alongside the existing AssignableType and Enum Compilable Property Getters) should solve the problem. A plan!
Step one is going to be to expose a way to request the LINQ Expression that the CompilableTypeConverterByConstructor uses in its conversion. To address this we'll update CompilableTypeConverterByConstructor to implement a new interface ICompilableTypeConverterByConstructor which in turn implements ITypeConverterByConstructor (which is all that CompilableTypeConverterByConstructor implemented previously) -
public interface ICompilableTypeConverterByConstructor<TSource, TDest>
: ICompilableTypeConverter<TSource, TDest>,
ITypeConverterByConstructor<TSource, TDest> { }
public interface ICompilableTypeConverter<TSource, TDest>
: ITypeConverter<TSource, TDest>
{
/// <summary>
/// This Linq Expression will generate a new TDest instance - the specified "param"
/// Expression must have a type that is assignable to TSource
/// </summary>
Expression GetTypeConverterExpression(Expression param);
}
public interface ITypeConverterByConstructor<TSource, TDest> : ITypeConverter<TSource, TDest>
{
ConstructorInfo Constructor { get; }
}
public interface ITypeConverter<TSource, TDest>
{
TDest Convert(TSource src);
}
The ITypeConverterByConstructor has now become a specialised form of ITypeConverter (with corresponding Compilable variants) which inherently makes sense but will also be useful where we're going (but let's not get ahead of ourselves, that's coming up later in the post).
More importantly is the ICompilableTypeConverter GetTypeConverterExpression method which allows the creation of a Compilable Property Getter that is based upon a conversion that we want to feed back into the mapper -
public class CompilableTypeConverterPropertyGetter<TSourceObject, TPropertyOnSource, TPropertyAsRetrieved>
: AbstractGenericCompilablePropertyGetter<TSourceObject, TPropertyAsRetrieved>
{
private PropertyInfo _propertyInfo;
private ICompilableTypeConverter<TPropertyOnSource, TPropertyAsRetrieved> _compilableTypeConverter;
public CompilableTypeConverterPropertyGetter(
PropertyInfo propertyInfo,
ICompilableTypeConverter<TPropertyOnSource, TPropertyAsRetrieved> compilableTypeConverter)
{
if (propertyInfo == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("propertyInfo");
if (!propertyInfo.DeclaringType.Equals(typeof(TSourceObject)))
throw new ArgumentException("Invalid propertyInfo - DeclaringType must match TSourceObject");
if (!propertyInfo.PropertyType.Equals(typeof(TPropertyOnSource)))
throw new ArgumentException("Invalid propertyInfo - PropertyType must match TPropertyOnSource");
if (compilableTypeConverter == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("compilableTypeConverter");
_propertyInfo = propertyInfo;
_compilableTypeConverter = compilableTypeConverter;
}
public override PropertyInfo Property
{
get { return _propertyInfo; }
}
/// <summary>
/// This Linq Expression will retrieves the value from SrcType.Property as TargetType,
/// the specified "param" Expression must have a type that is assignable to SrcType.
/// </summary>
public override Expression GetPropertyGetterExpression(Expression param)
{
if (param == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("param");
if (typeof(TSourceObject) != param.Type)
throw new ArgumentException("param.NodeType must match typeparam TSourceObject");
// Get property value (from object of type TSourceObject) without conversion (this
// will be as type TPropertyOnSource)
// - If value is null, return default TPropertyAsRetrieved (not applicable if a
// value type)
// - Otherwise, pass through type converter (to translate from TPropertyOnSource
// to TPropertyAsRetrieved)
var propertyValue = Expression.Property(param, _propertyInfo);
var conversionExpression = _compilableTypeConverter.GetTypeConverterExpression(propertyValue);
if (typeof(TPropertyOnSource).IsValueType)
return conversionExpression;
return Expression.Condition(
Expression.Equal(
propertyValue,
Expression.Constant(null)
),
Expression.Constant(default(TPropertyAsRetrieved), typeof(TPropertyAsRetrieved)),
conversionExpression
);
}
}
A corresponding CompilableTypeConverterPropertyGetterFactory is straight-forward to write. Like the other Property Getter Factories, it doesn't do a huge amount - it will determine whether a named property can be retrieved from a specified type and converted into a specified type based upon name match rules and what kind of Property Getter that Factory can generate)
public class CompilableTypeConverterPropertyGetterFactory<TPropertyOnSource, TPropertyAsRetrieved>
: ICompilablePropertyGetterFactory
{
private INameMatcher _nameMatcher;
private ICompilableTypeConverter<TPropertyOnSource, TPropertyAsRetrieved> _typeConverter;
public CompilableTypeConverterPropertyGetterFactory(
INameMatcher nameMatcher,
ICompilableTypeConverter<TPropertyOnSource, TPropertyAsRetrieved> typeConverter)
{
if (nameMatcher == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("nameMatcher");
if (typeConverter == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("typeConverter");
_nameMatcher = nameMatcher;
_typeConverter = typeConverter;
}
/// <summary>
/// This will return null if unable to return an ICompilablePropertyGetter for the
/// named property that will return a value as the requested type
/// </summary>
public ICompilablePropertyGetter Get(
Type srcType,
string propertyName,
Type destPropertyType)
{
if (srcType == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("srcType");
propertyName = (propertyName ?? "").Trim();
if (propertyName == "")
throw new ArgumentException("Null/empty propertyName specified");
if (destPropertyType == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("destPropertyType");
// If destination type does not match type converter's destination type then can
// not handle the request; return null
if (destPropertyType != typeof(TPropertyAsRetrieved))
return null;
// Try to get a property we CAN retrieve and convert as requested..
var property = srcType.GetProperties().FirstOrDefault(p =>
p.GetIndexParameters().Length == 0
&& _nameMatcher.IsMatch(propertyName, p.Name)
&& p.PropertyType == typeof(TPropertyOnSource)
);
if (property == null)
return null;
// .. if successful, use to instantiate a CompilableTypeConverterPropertyGetter
return (ICompilablePropertyGetter)Activator.CreateInstance(
typeof(CompilableTypeConverterPropertyGetter<,,>).MakeGenericType(
srcType,
property.PropertyType,
destPropertyType
),
property,
_typeConverter
);
}
IPropertyGetter IPropertyGetterFactory.Get(
Type srcType,
string propertyName,
Type destPropertyType)
{
return Get(srcType, propertyName, destPropertyType);
}
}
Note: I skipped over actually altering the CompilableTypeConverterByConstructor class to implement the GetTypeConverterExpression but it wasn't anything too complex, the generateCompiledConverter method was changed from
private Func<TSource, TDest> generateCompiledConverter()
{
var srcParameter = Expression.Parameter(typeof(TSource), "src");
var constructorParameterExpressions = new List<Expression>();
foreach (var constructorParameter in _constructor.GetParameters())
{
var index = constructorParameterExpressions.Count;
constructorParameterExpressions.Add(
_propertyGetters[index].GetPropertyGetterExpression(srcParameter)
);
}
return Expression.Lambda<Func<TSource, TDest>>(
Expression.New(
_constructor,
constructorParameterExpressions.ToArray()
),
srcParameter
).Compile();
}
and expanded into
private Func<TSource, TDest> generateCompiledConverter()
{
var srcParameter = Expression.Parameter(typeof(TSource), "src");
return Expression.Lambda<Func<TSource, TDest>>(
GetTypeConverterExpression(srcParameter),
srcParameter
).Compile();
}
/// <summary>
/// This Linq Expression will generate a new TDest instance - the specified "param"
/// Expression must have a type that is assignable to TSource
/// </summary>
public Expression GetTypeConverterExpression(Expression param)
{
if (param == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("param");
if (!typeof(TSource).IsAssignableFrom(param.Type))
throw new ArgumentException("param.Type must be assignable to typeparam TSource");
// Instantiate expressions for each constructor parameter by using each of the
// property getters against the source value
var constructorParameterExpressions = new List<Expression>();
foreach (var constructorParameter in _constructor.GetParameters())
{
var index = constructorParameterExpressions.Count;
constructorParameterExpressions.Add(
_propertyGetters[index].GetPropertyGetterExpression(param)
);
}
// Return an expression that to instantiate a new TDest by using property getters
// as constructor arguments
return Expression.Condition(
Expression.Equal(
param,
Expression.Constant(null)
),
Expression.Constant(default(TDest), typeof(TDest)),
Expression.New(
_constructor,
constructorParameterExpressions.ToArray()
)
);
}
The only notable difference is that GetTypeConverterExpression should return an Expression that can deal with null values - we need this so that null properties can be retrieved from source types and passed to destination type constructors. Previously there was a null check against the "src" parameter passed to the Convert method, but this can be relaxed now that nulls have to be supported for this class to work as part of a Property Getter.
With the introduction of a CombinedCompilablePropertyGetterFactory (which will run through a set a Compilable Property Getter Factories for each request until one of the returns a non-null value to the Get request), we end up with this structure:
var nameMatcher = new CaseInsensitiveSkipUnderscoreNameMatcher();
var converterFactory = new CompilableTypeConverterByConstructorFactory(
new ArgsLengthTypeConverterPrioritiserFactory(),
new CombinedCompilablePropertyGetterFactory(
new ICompilablePropertyGetterFactory[]
{
// Insert Compilable Property Getter Factories here..
}
)
);
which finally allows a setup such as:
var nameMatcher = new CaseInsensitiveSkipUnderscoreNameMatcher();
var roleConverterFactory = new CompilableTypeConverterByConstructorFactory(
new ArgsLengthTypeConverterPrioritiserFactory(),
new CombinedCompilablePropertyGetterFactory(
new ICompilablePropertyGetterFactory[]
{
new CompilableAssignableTypesPropertyGetterFactory(nameMatcher),
new CompilableEnumConversionPropertyGetterFactory(nameMatcher)
}
)
);
var employeeConverterFactory = new CompilableTypeConverterByConstructorFactory(
new ArgsLengthTypeConverterPrioritiserFactory(),
new CombinedCompilablePropertyGetterFactory(
new ICompilablePropertyGetterFactory[]
{
new CompilableAssignableTypesPropertyGetterFactory(nameMatcher),
new CompilableEnumConversionPropertyGetterFactory(nameMatcher),
new CompilableTypeConverterPropertyGetterFactory<SourceRole, DestRole>(
nameMatcher,
roleConverterFactory.Get<SourceRole, DestRole>()
)
}
)
);
var employeeConverter = employeeConverterFactory.Get<SourceEmployee, DestEmployee>();
var dest = employeeConverter.Convert(
new SourceEmployee()
{
Name = "Richard",
Role = new SourceRole() { Description = "Penguin Cleaner" }
}
);
Hoorah!
Now, there's a slight refinement that I want to look at next time but I think this post has gone on more than long enough.
For the super-observant, I mentioned that the use of ITypeConverter (as opposed to necessarily requiring ITypeConverterByConstructor) would be touched on again in this post. Since I've run out of steam that will be covered next time too.
Posted at 14:11
Dan is a big geek who likes making stuff with computers! He can be quite outspoken so clearly needs a blog :)
In the last few minutes he seems to have taken to referring to himself in the third person. He's quite enjoying it.