New Article On How To Create Fluent APIs

Of late there has been a rise in the number of people using Fluent APIs, you literally see them everywhere, but what are these "Fluent APIs"….Where can I get me one of those.

Here is what our friend Wikipedia has to say on the matter:

In software engineering, a fluent interface (as first coined by Eric Evans and Martin Fowler) is a way of implementing an object oriented API in a way that aims to provide for more readable code. A fluent interface is normally implemented by using method chaining to relay the instruction context of a subsequent call (but a fluent interface entails more than just method chaining). Generally, the context is defined through the return value of a called method self referential, where the new context is equivalent to the last context terminated through the return of a void context.

This style is marginally beneficial in readability due to its ability to provide a more fluid feel to the code however can be highly detrimental to debugging, as a fluent chain constitutes a single statement, in which debuggers may not allow setting up intermediate breakpoints for instance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluent_interface up on date 14/01/2011

So what do these Fluent APIs look like, well her is an example from Fluent NHibernate:

public class CatMap : ClassMap<Cat>
{
  public CatMap()
  {
    Id(x => x.Id);
    Map(x => x.Name)
      .Length(16)
      .Not.Nullable();
    Map(x => x.Sex);
    References(x => x.Mate);
    HasMany(x => x.Kittens);
  }
}

Want to know more, like how to create your own Fluent API. Well I just wrote a small article over at codeproject that will show you how to build you own, here is the articles Fluent API that is covered:

//Threaded Version, with correct Fluent API ordering
new DummyModelDataProvider()
    .IsThreaded()
    .SortBy(x => x.LName, ListSortDirection.Descending)
    .GroupBy(x => x.Location)
    .RunThreadedWithCallback(SetDemoData);

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If you want to learn more about all of this, have a read of the article over at this url:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/fluentAPI.aspx

Enjoy

.csharpcode, .csharpcode pre
{
font-size: small;
color: black;
font-family: consolas, “Courier New”, courier, monospace;
background-color: #ffffff;
/*white-space: pre;*/
}
.csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; }
.csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; }
.csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; }
.csharpcode .str { color: #006080; }
.csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; }
.csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; }
.csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; }
.csharpcode .html { color: #800000; }
.csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; }
.csharpcode .alt
{
background-color: #f4f4f4;
width: 100%;
margin: 0em;
}
.csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }