toJSON on par with toString

[juan_gandhi]

I've been thinking lately... say, you are writing a pojo, and it is a good practice to have a good toString(), right? How about toJSON/fromJSON? seems like it would be a good idea to have it everywhere as well, what do you think?

Comments

[wizzard]

I mean, to resolve them through GetMethods on type specified with 'this' modifier in code :)

[xeno-by.livejournal.com]

This won't work. When desugaring extension invocations compiler knows about lexical context - current namespace and the list of "usings". When you perform late binding, you don't have such info.

There are several workarounds tho, but they depend on your particular business logic. E.g. you could hardcode namespaces to look extension methods in (via compile-time constants or via configuration). Another option would be reading PDBs and acquiring namespace info for the method you wish (tho this won't work for release builds). Well, you get the idea - all solutions to this problem are hacks that work only under certain circumstances.

Btw, because of this particular glitch DLR doesn't support extension methods.

[wizzard]

I see. Maybe they'll encode it in IL at some time.

[xeno-by.livejournal.com]

By the way, this stuff with extension methods is a part of a global problem with C# 3.0 innovations. When used within LINQ scenarios, they play well and seem to be orthogonal additions to the language. But take a step aside - and you face all the ugliness.

[wizzard]

hehe. c# 2.0 was basically a direct mapping to CLR capabilities, but c# 3.0 went beyond that, that's why the discrepancies