source code => "Lambda based DSL"

So I've tidied up the source for the DSL from my last post a little... though my "test" was to represent a DSL
similar to the one Ayende displayed in
Brail - I haven't implemented any monorail view engine
integration, there's little point I feel, I was more interested
in being able to display a nested DSL-like syntax, and parse the
necessary information out of it as required. 



You can grab it from SVN repository
target="_blank">here (edit: I've now fix the PROPFIND proxy
issue, so the link should work)



At any rate, probably the most interesting example is the one
that takes this code:

var people = new List()
{
new Person() { FirstName = "Alex", LastName = "Henderson"},
new Person() { FirstName = "Joe", LastName = "Bloggs"}
};

var compDsl = new ComponentDsl();

compDsl.Add
(
GridComponent => compDsl.Component
(
compDsl.Parameters
(
source => people
),
header => compDsl.Section
(
tr => compDsl.As
(
th => compDsl.As
(
compDsl.Text("Names")
)
)
),
item => compDsl.Section
(
tr => compDsl.As
(
td => compDsl.As
(
compDsl.Item(p => p.FirstName + " " + p.LastName)
)
)
)
)
);

var dsl = new StandardDsl();

dsl.Add
(
html => dsl.As
(
body => compDsl
)
);

And converts it to this xhtml...






Names
Alex Henderson
Joe Bloggs



You can pretty quickly figure out what's going on by placing a
breakpoint on the Execute() method of the StandardDsl class and tracing through all the calls - in
essence all the nodes are emitted by calling the top-level Batch
delegate which causes a recursive call down the "tree", with the
information being emitted as a side-effect to an evaluation
scope.



Though I used nodes - effectively creating a structure that's
easier to parse, there's no reason why you couldn't make
immediate calls to some kind of object, avoiding the need for a
second round of parsing - the only trick is that you'd still need
to use some kind of scoped stack to push/pop the names of the
components because in a statement like this:

dsl.As
(
GridComponent => dsl.Component
(
// etc. etc.
)
)



the call to dsl.Component needs some way to inspect the
stack of names and pull "GridComponent" off the
top.



I'd love to hear from anyone who could see a use for this kind of
thing... it'd be nice to get a more realistic example... I'm
struggling to think of anything practical myself.

[Edit: I Noticed the code formatting was pretty awful, so
I've tidied it up a little... anyone got a good solution for
copy/pasting code out of orcas (CopyAsHtml2005 doesn't appear to
install under Orcas)]

Written on July 3, 2007