Tag: c#

A client reached out to us with a weird problem. Their ASP.NET WebAPI project (somewhat legacy tech) needed to communicate with an application running on a mainframe (dinosaur-grade legacy tech). But they were having XML serialisation issues…

They had a test XML payload, but only half of that kept coming across the wire:

first thing we suspected was missing DataContract/DataMember attributes, but everything seemed to be okay:

[DataContract(Name = "ComplexObject", Namespace = "")]
public class ComplexObject
{
    [DataMember]
    public int Id { get; set; }
    [DataMember]
    public string Name { get; set; }
    [DataMember]
    public string Location { get; set; }
    [DataMember]
    public string Reference { get; set; }
    [DataMember]
    public double Rate { get; set; }
    [DataMember]
    public double DiscountedRate { get; set; }
}

After scratching our heads for a little while and trying different solution from across the entirety of StackOverflow, we managed to dig up a piece of documentation that explained this behaviour:

1. Data members of base classes (assuming serialiser will apply these rules upwards recursively);
2. Data members in alphabetical order (bingo!);
3. Data members specifically numbered in decorating attribute;

With the above in mind, we got the following payload to serialise successfully:

There are other options

.NET comes with at least two XML serialisers: XmlSerializer and DataContractSerializer. A lot has been written about the two. We find this article written by Dan Rigsby to probably be the best source of information on the topic.

Key difference for us was the fact that XmlSerializer does not require any decorations and works out of the box. While DataContractSerializer needs us to make code changes. In our project everything was already set up with DataContract, so we did not have to change anything.

By default, WebAPI projects come configured to leverage DataContractSerializer. It however pays to know that in case of any issues we can switch to use XMLSerializer:

public static class WebApiConfig
{
    public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config)
    {
        config.Formatters.XmlFormatter.UseXmlSerializer = true; // global setting for all types
        config.Formatters.XmlFormatter.SetSerializer<ComplexObject>(new XmlSerializer(typeof(ComplexObject))); // overriding just for one type

Setting order

Yet another option to deal with ASP.NET XML serialisation issues would be to define property order explicitly:

[DataContract(Name = "ComplexObject", Namespace = "")]
public class ComplexObject
{
    [DataMember(Order = 1)]
    public int Id { get; set; }
    [DataMember(Order = 2)]
    public string Name { get; set; }
    [DataMember(Order = 3)]
    public string Location { get; set; }
    [DataMember(Order = 4)]
    public string Reference { get; set; }
    [DataMember(Order = 5)]
    public double Rate { get; set; }
    [DataMember(Order = 6)]
    public double DiscountedRate { get; set; }
}

Conclusion

XML serialisation has been around since the beginning of .NET. And even though it may seem that JSON has taken over, XML isn’t going anywhere any time soon. It is good to know we have many ways to deal with it should we ever need to.

Suppose we’ve got two lists that we would like to join based on, say, common Id property. With LINQ the code would look something along these lines:

var list1 = new List<MyItem> {};
var list2 = new List<MyItem> {};
var joined = list1.Join(list2, i => i.Id, j => j.Id, (k,l) => new {List1Item=k, List2Item=l});

resulting list of anonymous objects would have a property for each source object in the join. This is nothing new and has been documented pretty well.

But what if

We don’t know how many lists we’d have to join? Now we’ve got a list of lists of our entities (List Inception?!): List<List<MyItem>>. It becomes pretty obvious that we’d need to generate this code dynamically. We’ll run with LINQ Expression Trees – surely there’s a way. Generally speaking, we’ll have to build an object (anonymous type would be ideal) with fields like so:

{
  i0: items[0] // added on first run - we need to have at least two lists to join so it's safe to assume we'd
  i1: items[1] // added on first run - you need to have at least two lists in your join array 
  ... 
  iN: items[N] // added on each pass an joined with items[0] 
}

It is safe to assume that we need at least two lists for join to make sense, so we’d build the object above in two stages – first join two MyItem instances and get the structure going, Each subsequent join should append more MyItem instances to the resulting object until we’d get our result.

Picking types for the result

Now the problem is how we best define this object. The way anonymous types are declared, requires a type initialiser and a new keyword. We don’t have either of these at design time, so this method unfortunately will not work for us.

ExpandoObject

Another way to achieve decent developer experience with named object properties would be to use dynamic keyword – this is less than ideal as it effectively disables compiler static type checks. But we can keep going – so it’s an option here. To allow us to add properties at run time, we will use ExpandoObject:

static List<ExpandoObject> Join<TSource, TDest>(List<List<TSource>> items, Expression<Func<TSource, int>> srcAccessor, Expression<Func<ExpandoObject, int>> intermediaryAccessor, Expression<Func<TSource, TSource, ExpandoObject>> outerResultSelector)
{
	var joinLambdaType = typeof(ExpandoObject);            
	Expression<Func<ExpandoObject, TSource, ExpandoObject>> innerResultSelector = (expando, item) => expando.AddValue(item);
	
	var joinMethod = typeof(Enumerable).GetMethods().Where(m => m.Name == "Join").First().MakeGenericMethod(typeof(TSource), typeof(TSource), typeof(int), joinLambdaType);
	var toListMethod = typeof(Enumerable).GetMethods().Where(m => m.Name == "ToList").First().MakeGenericMethod(typeof(TDest));

	var joinCall = Expression.Call(joinMethod,
							Expression.Constant(items[0]),
							Expression.Constant(items[1]),
							srcAccessor,
							srcAccessor,
							outerResultSelector);
	joinMethod = typeof(Enumerable).GetMethods().Where(m => m.Name == "Join").First().MakeGenericMethod(typeof(TDest), typeof(TSource), typeof(int), joinLambdaType); // from now on we'll be joining ExpandoObject with MyEntity
	for (int i = 2; i < items.Count; i++) // skip the first two
	{
		joinCall =
			Expression.Call(joinMethod,
							joinCall,
							Expression.Constant(items[i]),
							intermediaryAccessor,
							srcAccessor,
							innerResultSelector);
	}

	var lambda = Expression.Lambda<Func<List<ExpandoObject>>>(Expression.Call(toListMethod, joinCall));
	return lambda.Compile()();
}

The above block references two extension methods so that we can easier manupulate the ExpandoObjects:

public static class Extensions 
 {
     public static ExpandoObject AddValue(this ExpandoObject expando, object value)
     {
         var dict = (IDictionary)expando;
         var key = $"i{dict.Count}"; // that was the easiest way to keep track of what's already in. You would probably find a way to do it better
         dict.Add(key, value);
         return expando;
     }
     public static ExpandoObject NewObject<T>(this ExpandoObject expando, T value1, T value2) 
     {
          var dict = (IDictionary<string, object>)expando;
          dict.Add("i0", value1);
          dict.Add("i1", value2);
          return expando; 
     }
 }

And with that, we should have no issue running a simple test like so:

class Program
{
    class MyEntity
    {
        public int Id { get; set; }
        public string Name { get; set; }

        public MyEntity(int id, string name)
        {
            Id = id; Name = name;
        }
    }

    static void Main()
    {
        List<List<MyEntity>> items = new List<List<MyEntity>> {
            new List<MyEntity> {new MyEntity(1,"test1_1"), new MyEntity(2,"test1_2")},
            new List<MyEntity> {new MyEntity(1,"test2_1"), new MyEntity(2,"test2_2")},
            new List<MyEntity> {new MyEntity(1,"test3_1"), new MyEntity(2,"test3_2")},
            new List<MyEntity> {new MyEntity(1,"test4_1"), new MyEntity(2,"test4_2")}
        };

        Expression<Func<MyEntity, MyEntity, ExpandoObject>> outerResultSelector = (i, j) => new ExpandoObject().NewObject(i, j); // we create a new ExpandoObject and populate it with first two items we join
        Expression<Func<ExpandoObject, int>> intermediaryAccessor = (expando) => ((MyEntity)((IDictionary<string, object>)expando)["i0"]).Id; // you could probably get rid of hardcoding this by, say, examining the first key in the dictionary
        
        dynamic cc = Join<MyEntity, ExpandoObject>(items, i => i.Id, intermediaryAccessor, outerResultSelector);

        var test1_1 = cc[0].i1;
        var test1_2 = cc[0].i2;

        var test2_1 = cc[1].i1;
        var test2_2 = cc[1].i2;
    }
}

Imagine a situation where you’d like to attach a debugger to an assembly that you have loaded dynamically? To make it a bit more plausible let us consider a scenario. Our client has a solution where they maintain extensive plugin ecosystem. Each plugin is a class library built with .net 4.5. Each plugin implements a common interface that main application is aware of. At runtime the application scans a folder and loads all assemblies into separate AppDomains. Under certain circumstances users/developers would like to be able to debug plugins in Visual Studio.
Given how seldom we would opt for this technique, documenting our solution might be an exercise in vain. But myself being a huge fan of weird and wonderful – I couldn’t resist going through with this case study.

Inventorying moving parts

First of all we’d need a way to inject code into the assembly. Apparently we can not directly replace methods we loaded from disk – SwapMethodBody() needs a DynamicModule. So we opted to define a subclass wrapper. Next, we need to actually stop execution and offer developers to start debugging. Using Debugger.Launch() is the easiest way to achieve that. Finally, we’d look at different ways to load assemblies into separate AppDomains to maintain existing convention.

Injecting Debugger.Launch()

The main attraction here – and Reflection.Emit is a perfect candidate for the job. Theory is fairly simple: we create a new dynamic assembly, module, type and a method. Then we generate code inside of the method and return wrapper instance:

public static object CreateWrapper(Type ServiceType, MethodInfo baseMethod)
{
    var asmBuilder = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.DefineDynamicAssembly(new AssemblyName($"newAssembly_{Guid.NewGuid()}"), AssemblyBuilderAccess.Run);
    var module = asmBuilder.DefineDynamicModule($"DynamicAssembly_{Guid.NewGuid()}");
    var typeBuilder = module.DefineType($"DynamicType_{Guid.NewGuid()}", TypeAttributes.Public, ServiceType);
    var methodBuilder = typeBuilder.DefineMethod("Run", MethodAttributes.Public | MethodAttributes.NewSlot);

    var ilGenerator = methodBuilder.GetILGenerator();

    ilGenerator.EmitCall(OpCodes.Call, typeof(Debugger).GetMethod("Launch", BindingFlags.Static | BindingFlags.Public), null);
    ilGenerator.Emit(OpCodes.Pop);

    ilGenerator.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0);
    ilGenerator.EmitCall(OpCodes.Call, baseMethod, null);
    ilGenerator.Emit(OpCodes.Ret);

    /*
     * the generated method would be roughly equivalent to:
     * new void Run()
     * {
     *   Debugger.Launch();
     *   base.Run();
     * }
     */

    var wrapperType = typeBuilder.CreateType();
    return Activator.CreateInstance(wrapperType);
}

Triggering the method

After we’ve generated a wrapper – we should be in position to invoke the desired method. In this example I’m using all-reflection approach:

public void Run()
{
    var wrappedInstance = DebuggerWrapperGenerator.CreateWrapper(ServiceType, ServiceType.GetMethod("Run"));
    wrappedInstance.GetType().GetMethod("Run")?.Invoke(wrappedInstance, null);
 // nothing special here
}

The task becomes even easier if we know the interface to cast to.

Adding AppDomain into the mix

The above parts don’t depend much on where the code will run. However, trying to satisfy the layout requirement, we experimented with a few different configurations. In the end it appears that I’m able to confidently place the code in correct AppDomain by either leveraging .DoCallBack() or making sure that Launcher helper is created with .CreateInstanceAndUnwrap():

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    var appDomain = AppDomain.CreateDomain("AppDomainInMain", AppDomain.CurrentDomain.Evidence,
        new AppDomainSetup { ApplicationBase = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetupInformation.ApplicationBase });

    appDomain.DoCallBack(() =>
    {
        var launcher = new Launcher(PathToDll);
        launcher.Run();
    });    
}

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    Launcher.RunInNewAppDomain(PathToDll);
}
public class Launcher : MarshalByRefObject
{
    private Type ServiceType { get; }

    public Launcher(string pathToDll)
    {
        var assembly = Assembly.LoadFrom(pathToDll);
        ServiceType = assembly.GetTypes().SingleOrDefault(t => t.Name == "Class1");
    }

    public void Run()
    {
        var wrappedInstance = DebuggerWrapperGenerator.CreateWrapper(ServiceType, ServiceType.GetMethod("Run"));
        wrappedInstance.GetType().GetMethod("Run")?.Invoke(wrappedInstance, null);
    }

    public static void RunInNewAppDomain(string pathToDll)
    {
        var appDomain = AppDomain.CreateDomain("AppDomainInLauncher", AppDomain.CurrentDomain.Evidence, AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetupInformation);

        var launcher = appDomain.CreateInstanceAndUnwrap(typeof(Launcher).Assembly.FullName, typeof(Launcher).FullName, false, BindingFlags.Public|BindingFlags.Instance,
            null, new object[] { pathToDll }, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture, null);
        (launcher as Launcher)?.Run();
    }
}

Testing it

In the end we’ve got the following prompt:

after letting it run through, we’d get something looking like this:

As usual, full code for this example sits in my GitHub if you want to take it for a spin.

OData (Open Data Protocol) is an ISO approved standard that defines a set of best practices for building and consuming RESTful APIs. It allows us write business logic and not worry too much about request and response headers, status codes, HTTP methods, and other variables.

We won’t go into too much detail on how to write OData queries and how to use it – there’s plenty resources out there. We’ll rather have a look at a bit esoteric scenario where we consider defining our own parser and then walking the AST to get desired values.

Problem statement

Suppose we’ve got a filter string that we received from the client:

"?$filter =((Name eq 'John' or Name eq 'Peter') and (Department eq 'Professional Services'))"

And we’d like to apply custom validation to the filter. Ideally we’d like to get a structured list of properties and values so we can run our checks:

Filter 1:
    Key: Name
    Operator: eq
    Value: John
Operator: or

Filter 2:
    Key: Name
    Operator: eq
    Value: Peter

Operator: and

Filter 3:
    Key: Department
    Operator: eq
    Value: Professional Services

Some options are:

• ODataUriParser – but it seems to have some issues with .net Core support just yet
• Regular Expression – not very flexible
• ODataQueryOptions – produces raw text but cannot broken down any further

What else?

One other way to approach this would be parsing. And there are plenty tools to do that (see flex or bison for example). In .net world, however, Irony might be a viable option: it’s available in .net standard 2.0 which we had no issues plugging into a .net core 3.1 console test project.

Grammar

To start off, we normally need to define a grammar. But luckily, Microsoft have been kind enough to supply us with EBNF reference so all we have to do is to adapt it to Irony. I ended up implementing a subset of the grammar above that seems to cater for example statement (and a bit above and beyond, feel free to cut it down).

using Irony.Parsing;

namespace irony_playground
{
    [Language("OData", "1.0", "OData Filter")]
    public class OData: Grammar
    {
        public OData()
        {
            // first we define some terms
            var identifier = new RegexBasedTerminal("identifier", "[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z_0-9]*");
            var string_literal = new StringLiteral("string_literal", "'");
            var integer_literal = new NumberLiteral("integer_literal", NumberOptions.IntOnly);
            var float_literal = new NumberLiteral("float_literal", NumberOptions.AllowSign|NumberOptions.AllowSign) 
                                        | new RegexBasedTerminal("float_literal", "(NaN)|-?(INF)");
            var boolean_literal = new RegexBasedTerminal("boolean_literal", "(true)|(false)");

            var filter_expression = new NonTerminal("filter_expression");
            var boolean_expression = new NonTerminal("boolean_expression");
            var collection_filter_expression = new NonTerminal("collection_filter_expression");
            var logical_expression = new NonTerminal("logical_expression");
            var comparison_expression = new NonTerminal("comparison_expression");
            var variable = new NonTerminal("variable");
            var field_path = new NonTerminal("field_path");
            var lambda_expression = new NonTerminal("lambda_expression");
            var comparison_operator = new NonTerminal("comparison_operator");
            var constant = new NonTerminal("constant");

            Root = filter_expression; // this is where our entry point will be. 

            // and from here on we expand on all terms and their relationships
            filter_expression.Rule = boolean_expression;

            boolean_expression.Rule = collection_filter_expression
                                      | logical_expression
                                      | comparison_expression
                                      | boolean_literal
                                      | "(" + boolean_expression + ")"
                                      | variable;
            variable.Rule = identifier | field_path;

            field_path.Rule = MakeStarRule(field_path, ToTerm("/"), identifier);

            collection_filter_expression.Rule =
                field_path + "/all(" + lambda_expression + ")"
                | field_path + "/any(" + lambda_expression + ")"
                | field_path + "/any()";

            lambda_expression.Rule = identifier + ":" + boolean_expression;

            logical_expression.Rule =
                boolean_expression + (ToTerm("and", "and") | ToTerm("or", "or")) + boolean_expression
                | ToTerm("not", "not") + boolean_expression;

            comparison_expression.Rule =
                variable + comparison_operator + constant |
                constant + comparison_operator + variable;

            constant.Rule =
                string_literal
                | integer_literal
                | float_literal
                | boolean_literal
                | ToTerm("null");

            comparison_operator.Rule = ToTerm("gt") | "lt" | "ge" | "le" | "eq" | "ne";

            RegisterBracePair("(", ")");
        }
    }
}

NB: Irony comes with Grammar Explorer tool that allows us to load grammar dlls and debug them with free text input.

after we’re happy with the grammar, we need to reference it from our project and parse the input string:

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var g = new OData();
        var l = new LanguageData(g);
        var r = new Parser(l);
        var p = r.Parse("((Name eq 'John' or Name eq 'Grace Paul') and (Department eq 'Finance and Accounting'))"); // here's your tree
        // this is where you walk it and extract whatever data you desire 
    }
}

Then, all we’ve got to do is walk the resulting tree and apply any custom logic based on syntax node type. One example how to do that can be found in this StackOverflow answer.