StaticVisitor (namespace: Sid.Tools.StaticVisitor)

A customizable data structure static visitor for C#.

This package, released under MIT license, allows to statically visit data structures easily in C#. Static visit means that it's the types (classes) of the data structure that get visited, not the instances.

Usages

The basic usage is to create an instance of Sid.Tools.StaticVisitor.StaticVisitor and pass an IList<Stack<TypeVisit>> that will collect the results of the visit, then invoke the Visit method.

Overloads for more advanced behaviour also exist, where you specify a custom Action<Stack<TypeVisit>> which defines what custom action to execute upon visit.

The easiest way to access the visited type in the returned list or upon invocation of the above Action, is via the [Stack<TypeVisit>].CurrentType() or [Stack<TypeVisit>].CurrentVisit() extension methods, but it is possible to observe the entire stack as well, allowing to understand why a type was visited, and how it was reached.

Note that not all types are visited by default: by default primitive types and object are not visited; this behaviour can be customized (see below).

Visit behaviour can be customized by passing a custom StaticVisitorConfiguration instance.

Basic example

The method DoSomething

public class DataStructure {
   public Property SomeProperty { get; }
}

public class Property {}

public void DoSomething() {
   var visitor = new StaticVisitor(out var list);
   visitor.Visit(typeof(DataStructure));
   foreach(var stack in list)
     Console.WriteLine(stack.CurrentType())
}

will write the following types to the console:

DataStructure
Property

Custom type filtering example

The following code

var visitor = new Sid.Tools.StaticVisitor.StaticVisitor(out var list, new Tools.DataStructure.StaticVisitorConfiguration()
   {
      TypeCanBeVisited = x =>
         Sid.Tools.StaticVisitor.StaticVisitorConfiguration.DefaultTypeCanBeVisited(x)
         && !x.IsValueType
   });

will specify which types should be visited and which shouldn't. Specifically it will preserve the default behaviour, but also exclude types that are value types.

Advanced configuration

Please refer to the docstring documentation in https://github.com/micheledicosmo/StaticVisitor/blob/master/StaticVisitor/StaticVisitor.cs in the object StaticVisitorConfiguration.

Order of visit

The types get visited following this order:

The type itself
Inherited types
Encompassing types
Assignable types (disabled by default)
Properties