Friday, May 3, 2013

Extension methods are cool

You are creating a vocabulary, not writing a program. Be a poet for a moment.

-- Kent Beck

When Microsoft first introduced extension methods to C#, my first reaction was "eh". I viewed them as a novelty without much use. As time has worn on, I've come to appreciate them more and more. Their biggest win for me is to add features to basic system defined types and to fix what I consider deficiencies in the .Net libraries.

Static methods that take as a parameter an instance of the class they are defined in really annoy me. One frequent irritation: string.IsNullOrEmpty(). Every time I go to use this I always start writing the variable I want to test and then realize the method is static and have to go back and insert the "string.IsNullOrEmpty" at the front. This is simply one of many, many other similar methods spread throughout the framework with this.

Shortly after extension methods were added, one day while I was again grumbling at the IsNullOrEmpty implementation, I realized this would be an easy thing to fix. About five minutes later, after figuring out the syntax for extension methods, I had something like:
public static class StringExtensions
{
     public static bool IsNullOrEmpty(this string target)
     {
          return string.IsNullOrEmpty(target);
     }
}

Now I could write tests in the much more natural (for me) "if (someString.IsNullOrEmpty())..." format. Personally I find this much easier to read.

Flush with this success I immediately added another library function I remembered from Delphi that, in my opinion, helps with readability:

public static class ObjectExtensions
{
     public static bool IsAssigned(this object target)
     {
          return target != null;
     }
}

Instead of "if (someObj != null)..." I could now say "if (someObj.IsAssigned())..."

There is a real downside I with this though: Resharper does not recognize this as a test for null and reports a possible null value warning on subsequent accesses.

I'll admit, these aren't earth-shaking, industry-changing algorithms. But in day-in, day-out coding, I find the resulting code much easier to read.

Today I threw together a couple extensions to simplify work with Points, Rectangles and ranges:
public static Extensions
{
     public static Point Center(this Rectangle bounds)
     {
          return new Point((bounds.Left + bounds.Width) / 2, (bounds.Top + bounds.Height) / 2);
     }

     public static double DistanceTo(this Point p1, Point p2)
     {
          return Math.Sqrt(Math.Pow(p1.X - p2.X, 2) + Math.Pow(p1.Y - p2.Y, 2));
     }

     public static int ConstrainTo(this int constrainedValue, int min, int max)
     {
          return Math.Max(min, Math.Min(constrainedValue, max));
     }
}

With these, I transformed a method where the purpose was lost in all the notation to one where the purpose was eminently clear. Extension methods truly enable the craftsman to apply the opening quote from Kent Beck. They easily allow the developer to introduce, at the application level, domain vocabulary to system and other 3rd party classes.

Yes, extension methods are pretty cool!