ORGINAL SPEAL
Ok so im kind of in a pickle and maybe I can get some clarification and advice here. Im not much familiar with C# but I have done something similar in a Groovy/Grails web application.
So my issue. I have two objects. One is a Shipper(holds basic info on a shipping company). The other is a Vehicle object(Holds information about shipping vehicles). Now a Shipper can have numbers types of shipping vehicles. These are going to be populated in a local sql database in visual studio 2010. I was going to put all this information into one shipper object and one shipper table. Instead I am going the route of making the two different objects. My issue is bringing them back together from the db and linking them into one joined object. What I have done in a Groovy/Grails web application (with help) was Map two objects, A user and a role which came from 2 different tables, together off an id (I'm don't know if I fully understand this but I'm working with it - There was a lot of hand holding)
So in C#. I was looking at mapping and I'm not sure if this is needed or how to go about it. Taking Shipper + Vehicle and making a Shipper/Vehicle object. My lack of understanding in the subject I think makes these seem really trivial.
Or would this be something that I would need an collection for? Making a collection of these two objects.
So maybe a clarification on the two when it comes to C# or at least a Simplified explanation of the two and maybe some basic implementations of each.
I don't need anything too extensive. Im having some crazy coders block on this one for some reason (Might be the copious amounts of red bull and coffee).
Again I lack a lot of knowledge on these datatypes and c# in general.
Ill be monitoring this and updating as I personally progress or more questions/flaming arise. I just need opinions and help to get past this blocker.
EDIT/NEW SPEAL
Ok. So since I don't even know where to start. And given the information above.
I do not understand the difference between Collections and Mapping in C#(or any language at that matter) even after looking up the two. They seem similar to me.
so NEW QUESTION: In this situation, would you use a Map or a Collection. A "Why" would be nice but not needed I guess if thats asking too much.
If I can get that answered then I will be happen and try to go figure it out. I just don't wanna go down a rabbit hole that went the wrong way. I understand the hate of asking a question without showing what iv done. But I have not got that far because of this underlying question. Sorry for the "ignorance" but I would really like to understand which path to at least start down in this situation. I wasn't asking for "hey code this for me". Examples would surely help but a decent explanation would of been nice at least. But I guess ill just ask a yes/no, do this/that question and Ill take it from there.
-Sorry?
I'm in the middle of learning my C#, so I don't understand what you mean by the Map datastructure. Here's a very informative site regarding collections that will tell you about how to use each datastructure:
http://csharp.net-informations.com/collection/csharp-collection-tutorial.htm
If I knew what you mean by Map, I might be able to help you further.
I'm working on an XNA project, for the Xbox 360.
For this I have built an extensive UI library, all with relative positions, dozens of controls and stuff like that.
At the moment of speaking, all the design elements are created in page classes, which is a lot of code (think of margins, aligns, labels, and so on).
So I was thinking, shouldn't it be possible, to create a file, like a XAML file for example, and using C#, parse it to objects?
XNAML uses this kind of approach (I think), so I know it must be possible, I'm just wondering how. I could go with the approach of parsing the file manually line by line, and creating every object, but I think this would be pretty complex & nasty code, considering the amount of different objects. Any input is greatly appreciated!
F.Y.I., XNAML is deprecated (I even think it never went live)
I'm trying to write a visualiser for some code which generates graphics for barcodes and labels. The way I want to do this is by recording the methods+parameters being run to a file, so I can play them back and see the visual output generated at each stage (so a kind of visual debugger to help me fix issues with measurements in the drawing)
I have access to the methods, and I can put anything I like in them - but I'm stuck on the best way to record the method signature being called and the parameters, especially since a lot of them are overloads etc.
Is there anything simple that will help me serialize/record actual method call information? (with a view to replay it back, so I need to programmatically load the information and call it) Perhaps something reflection-related?
Note: I'm an intern on the project I'm working on, and I'm probably not allow to introduce new assemblies etc. into the build, so I think aspect-based things requiring libraries are out. (At the same time, I'm not just asking a Q. I should be figuring out myself - this is more an additional thing I'm doing during my lunch break to help my main task)
It might be a good idea to start from an existing profiler as a base - e.g. from http://code.google.com/p/slimtune/
Note that profilers themselves are quite complicated - for .Net they require some C++/COM knowledge - but if you start from a base like slimtune, then hopefully you'll be able to avoid this core code and will instead be able to focus on your own visualisation requirements.
Recording the method name itself is easy, parameters will be more difficult. I think the only way to generically retrieve the parameters is to use reflection--the alternative is to have an ungodly amount of logging code where you explicitly log every parameter.
Also consider that you'll need all parameters to be serializable, and depending on how you want the file to be used (by a program vs. human readable) you might have to implement quite a bit of boilerplate serialization code.
You should really consider existing profiling tools and testing tools rather than thinking of inventing something new. It sounds like performance tests or integration tests may be more valuable than a "playback" utility.
i feel like i'm going back to the stone age.
how do i relearn to develop without intellisense (pydev intellisense doesn't count).. in general, how does one successfully leave the comfort of visual studio ?
I recently learned python with a strong C# background.
My advise: Just do it. Sorry, couldn't resist but I'm also serious. Install python and read: Python.org documentation (v2.6). A book might help too -- I like the Python PhraseBook. From there, I started using python to implement solutions for various things. Most notably, ProjectEuler.net questions.
It forced me to consider the languages and built in data structures.
Python is truly easy to use and intuitive. To learn the basics, took me about an hour. To get pretty good with it, took around 5 hours. Of course, there is always more to learn.
Also, I want to note that I would discourage using IronPython or Jython because I feel learning core, regular python is the first step.
Python has rich "introspection" features. In particular, you can find out a lot about built-in features using a command called help() from the Python command line.
Suppose you want to use regular expressions, and want to find out how to use them.
>>> import re
>>> help(re)
You get a nice display of information, automatically shown to you a page at a time (hit the space bar to see the next page).
If you already know you want to use the sub() function from the re module, you can get help on just that:
>>> help(re.sub)
And this help() feature will even work on your own code, as long as you define Python docstrings for your modules, classes, and functions.
You can enable features in the vim editor (or gvim, or vim for Windows) that enable an "IntelliSense"-like autocompletion feature, and you can use Exuberant Ctags to generate hyperlink "tags" to let you navigate quickly through your code. These turn vim into something that is roughly as powerful as an IDE, with the full power of vim for editing. (There isn't an explicit refactoring tool built in to vim, but there are options available.
And as others have noted, you can get IDEs for Python too. I've used the Wingware IDE, and I recommend it. I try to do most of my work with free, open-source software, but that is one piece of proprietary software I would be willing to buy. I have also used Eclipse with the Pydev plugin (I used its refactoring tool and it worked fine).
P.S. Python has a richer feature set than C#, albeit at the cost that your code won't run as fast. Once you get used to Python, you won't feel like you are in the stone age anymore.
One step at a time?
Start off with simple programs (things you can write with your eyes closed in C#), and keep going... You will end up knowing the API by heart.
<rant>
This is sort of the reason that I think being a good visual studio user makes you a bad developer. Instead of learning an API, you look in the object browser until you find something that sounds more or less like what you are looking for, instantiate it, then hit . and start looking for what sounds like the right thing to use. While this is very quick, it also means it takes forever to learn an API in any depth, which often means you end up either re-inventing the wheel (because the wheel is buried under a mountain worth of household appliances and you had no idea it was there), or just doing things in a sub-optimal way. Just because you can find A solution quickly, doesn't mean it is THE BEST solution.
</rant>
In the case of .NET, which ships with about a billion APIs for everything under the sun, this is actually preferred. You need to sift through a lot of noise to find what you are aiming for.
Pythonic code favors one, obvious way to do any given thing. This tends to make the APIs very straight forward and readable. The trick is to learn the language and learn the APIs. It is not terribly hard to do, especially in the case of python, and while not being able to rely on intellisense may be jarring at first, it shouldn't take more then a week or two before you get used to it not being there.
Learn the language and the basic standard libraries with a good book. When it comes to a new library API, I find the REPL and some exploratory coding can get me to a pretty good understanding of what is going on fairly quickly.
You could always start with IronPython and continue to develop in Visual Studio.
The python ide from wingware is pretty nice. Thats what I ended up using going from visual studio C++/.net to doing python.
Don't worry about intellisense. Python is really simple and there really isn't that much to know, so after a few projects you'll be conceiving of python code while driving, eating, etc., without really even trying. Plus, python's built in text editor (IDLE) has a wimpy version of intellisense that has always been more than sufficient for my purposes. If you ever go blank and want to know what methods/properties and object has, just type this in an interactive session:
dir(myobject)
Same way you do anything else that doesn't have IntelliStuff.
I'm betting you wrote that question without the aid of an IntelliEnglish computer program that showed you a list of verbs you could use and automatically added punctuation at the end of your sentences, for example. :-)
I use Eclipse and PyDev, most of the time, and the limited auto-completion help that it provides is pretty useful.
It's not ever going to come up to the level of VS's IntelliSense, and it can't, because of the dynamic nature of Python. But there are compensations, big ones.
The biggest is the breaking of the code-compile-test cycle. It's so easy to write and test prototype code in IDLE that very often it's where I go first: I'll sketch out and test a couple of methods that have to interoperate, figure out that there's something I don't know, learn it, fix my test, and then port the whole thing over to PyDev and watch it work the first time.
Another is that it's a lot simpler. It's really important to know what the standard modules are, and what they do, but for the most part that can be picked up with a little reading. I only use a small handful of modules in my everyday programming - itertools, os, csv (yeah, well), datetime, StringIO - and everything else is there if I need it, but usually I don't.
The stuff that it's really important to know is stuff that IntelliSense couldn't help you with anyway. Auto-completion isn't going to make
self.__dict__.update(kwargs)
make a damn bit of sense; you have to learn what an amazing line of code that is, and why you'd write it, by yourself.
Then you'll think, "how would I even begin to implement something like that in C#?" and realize that the tools these stone-age people are using are a little more sophisticated than you think.
A mistake people coming from C# or Java make a lot is recreate a large class hierarchy like is common in those languages. With Python this is almost never useful. Instead, learn about duck typing. And don't worry too much about the lack of static typing: in practice, it's almost never an issue.
I'm not too familiar with Python so I'll give some general advice. Make sure to print out some reference pages of common functions. Keep them by you(or pinned to a wall or desk) at all times when your programming.. I'm traditionally a "stone age" developer and after developing in VS for a few months I'm finding my hobby programming is difficult without intellisense.. but keep at it to memorize the most common functions and eventually it'll just be natural
You'll also have to get use to a bit more "difficult" of debugging(not sure how that works with python)
While your learning though, you should enjoy the goodness(at least compared to C#) of Python even if you don't have intellisense.. hopefully this will motivate you!
I've only ever used IDLE for python development and it is not fun in the least. I would recommend getting your favorite text editor, mine is notepad++, and praying for a decent plugin for it. I only ever had to go from Eclipse to Visual Studio so my opinions are generally invalid in these contexts.
Pyscripter does a reasonable job at auto-completion/intellisense. I've been using it recently as I started to learn Python/Django, where I've been mainly a C# developer for the last few years.
I suggest going cold turkey - languages like Python shine with great text editors. Choose one you want to become amazing at (vim, emacs, etc.) and never look back.
I use Komodo Edit and it does reasonably good guessing at the autocompletion.
Others have suggested several editors that have intellisense-like capabilities. Try them out.
Also install ipython and use that to learn the language interactively. It is like a souped up version of the regular python interactive shell with lots and lots of added capabilities, and one of the most useful it its extensive context sensitive tab-completion and help.
For example if you type
import r<tab>
it will show all the modules you can import starting with r
import re
re.<tab>
will show all the objects in the re module
re.compile?
will show the docstring and other information about the re.compile function, automatically piping it through a pager if it is longer than a screenful.
re.compile??
will show the source code as well, if available.
Using this I find it is much faster to switch to ipython and query objects directly than it is to look up anything in the docs. You have access to the usual python help() system as well.
ipython has lots and lots of other features - far too many to cover in a short post.
I am currently developing an application where you can create "programs" with it without writing source code, just click&play if you like.
Now the question is how do I generate an executable program from my data model. There are many possibilities but I am not sure which one is the best for me. I need to generate assemblies with classes and namespace and everything which can be part of the application.
CodeDOM class: I heard of lots of limitations and bugs of this class. I need to create attributes on method parameters and return values. Is this supported?
Create C# source code programmatically and then call CompileAssemblyFromFile on it: This would work since I can generate any code I want and C# supports most CLR features. But wouldn't this be slow?
Use the reflection ILGenerator class: I think with this I can generate every possible .NET code. But I think this is much more complicated and error prone than the other approaches?
Are there other possible solutions?
EDIT:
The tool is general for developing applications, it is not restricted to a specific domain. I don't know if it can be considered a visual programming language. The user can create classes, methods, method calls, all kinds of expressions. It won't be very limitating because you should be able to do most things which are allowed in real programming languages.
At the moment lots of things must still be written by the user as text, but the goal at the end is, that nearly everything can be clicked together.
You my find it is rewarding to look at the Dynamic Language Runtime which is more or less designed for creating high-level languages based on .NET.
It's perhaps also worth looking at some of the previous Stack Overflow threads on Domain Specific Languages which contain some useful links to tools for working with DSLs, which sounds a little like what you are planning although I'm still not absolutely clear from the question what exactly your aim is.
Most things "click and play" should be simple enough just to stick some pre-defined building-block objects together (probably using interfaces on the boundaries). Meaning: you might not need to do dynamic code generation - just "fake it". For example, using property-bag objects (like DataTable etc, although that isn't my first choice) for values, etc.
Another option for dynamic evaluation is the Expression class; especially in .NET 4.0, this is hugely versatile, and allows compilation to a delegate.
Do the C# source generation and don't care about speed until it matters. The C# compiler is quite quick.
When I wrote a dynamic code generator, I relied heavily on System.Reflection.Emit.
Basically, you programatically create dynamic assemblies and add new types to them. These types are constructed using the Emit constructs (properties, events, fields, etc..). When it comes to implementing methods, you'll have to use an ILGenerator to pump out MSIL op-codes into your method. That sounds super scary, but you can use a couple of tools to help:
A pre-built sample implementation
ILDasm to inspect the op-codes of the sample implementation.
It depends on your requirements, CodeDOM would certainly be the best fit for a "program" stored it in a "data model".
However its unlikely that using option 2 will be in any way measurably slower in comparision with any other approach.
I would echo others in that 1) the compiler is quick, and 2) "Click and Play" things should be simple enough so that no single widget added to a pile of widgets can make it an illegal pile.
Good luck. I'm skeptical that you can achieve point (2) for anything but really toy-level programs.