Writing your first Aspect with Postsharp in C#

Hi!

As some of you might remember, some years ago I started to dabble in the world of Aspects Oriented Programming. I also wrote three posts explaining what is aspect oriented programming, what are its advantages and I gave an example on how to implement aspects in Java using AspectJ. That was a few years ago. Nevertheless, those posts are more relevant than ever!! So if you don't feel that sure with AOP, I´d recommend you to read a few on what aspects are to understand it before you continuing reading.

But life and likes started taking me to and through the .NET and C# world, so I began to look for new tools. Today there are really a lot of tools and frameworks to support aspects, however I chose the one called Postsharp.

Until now, I must admit that the simplicity of this framework seems wonderful for me when compared with other like Spring.NET AOP, which requires a little more of skills when setting it up. Postsharp doesn't need to be configured!! So this is the first advantage.

That said, let's go to the point and see an example on how this framework works.

Maybe the correct thing would be to start defining some concepts that I didn't clarify in those posts, and which are usefull to understand what we are doing. But no: today we start directly with an example. After that, in other posts, I will clarify these points.


So, lets imagine a very simple scenery. It's about a well-known and complex application called "Hello, World" ;), on which we are going to add an aspect. We are going to create only one aspect, that will be responsible to intercept the program's execution just before calling the method who writes "Hello World" in to the screen.

Step 1: Add Postsharp to the project.

Once we've created an empty project (e.g. Console Application), we add the Postsharp packet to it. The simplest way to do it is, of course, using NuGet. So easy as opening NuGet and searching the framework by its name. Then adding it to the project.

Here it is worth it to mention, that once added to the project, Postsharp asks the user to download an executable to be installed (version VS > 2010). This is meant to install a component that will added to Visual Studio. Postsharp has a free version which is enough to write aspects with total freedom, but it also has two more versions which are not only not free, but very expensive for the single user, but provide already-written and already-working aspects and also the possibility to write complex aspects. I haven't had yet the chance to try them, but I'm gonna do it as soon as possible. But do not be afraid of it: get the Express version (the free one) to continue. This installation needs to be made only once. So its not a problem.

Step 2: Write the "Hello World".

Actually, steps 1 and 2 are interchangeables. It is really the same. We can write first the "base" project (without aspects) and then install Postsharp.

I know it can be difficult, so I'm gonna help you. To create the "Hello World" project, you should call the method WriteLine() to write in the console, in the main class.

using System;

namespace FirstTryWithPostSharp
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Hello, World!");
        }
    }
}

I guess you didn't have much more complications in this step! ;) Let's move on!

Step 3: Write the Aspect.

Now the interesting part: an aspect, is nothing else but a class! Yes, that simple! Well.. but actually this class must accomplish two conditions:

1. It must be ALWAYS serializable. This is achieved applying the "Serializable" attribute as we'll see soon..
2. It ALWAYS inherits from one Postsharp's class, which give our class the "super powers", to put it in some way. They aren't actually superpowers, but these Postsharp's classes have methods which can be overridento redefine them. Postsharp's Core will insert them in our code during compile time. In our example, it will be inserted just before the call to Main() method.

Ok, lets create the class, which we can call AspectThatInterceptsAMethod and says this:

using PostSharp.Aspects;
using System;

namespace FirstTryWithPostSharp
{
    [Serializable]
    class AspectThatInterceptsAMethod : OnMethodBoundaryAspect
    {
        public override void OnEntry(MethodExecutionArgs args)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Entering the method: " + args.Method.Name);
        }
    }
}

Briefly I want to say that I assume that we already know where this class is being indicated as Serializable, and that the aspect (the class) inherits from the class  OnMethodBoundaryAspect, which provides the possibility to rewrite some methods. In this case, we chose the method OnEntry() which indicates that whatever we do inside it will be executed just before executing the methods to which this aspect will be applied. But like OnEntry(), there are other methods that you can also redifne: OnExit(), OnSuccess() y OnException(). Lets see how to apply this aspect to the Main() Method.

Another little detail, is that args.Method.Name give us the name of the method that was intercepted. This, and much, much more (like accesing to the parameters, and its values) are part the powerful tools with which we count.

Step 4: Indicate to which methods our aspect will be applied.

So far we've made an aspect as god demands. But it is isolated, i.e. it is not being used! To use it, we just have to apply it as an attribute in the methods we want to be affected by it. This is made incredible easy in the following way:

 [AspectThatInterceptsAMethod]
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {

If we now run the project, we'll see that the aspect's text is showed at first, and then Main method's text. This occurs this way, because the aspect will be executed always before the method. Why? Just because we decided to overwrite the OnEntry() method. If we'd wanted to show the text before AND after the main's method, then we should have overwritten also the OnExit() method inside the aspect. Yes, only that!.

Another interesting tip is, that if we want the aspect to be applied to ALL methods of a class, it's just needed to put the attribute over the class name. Like this:

    [AspectThatInterceptsAMethod]
    class Program
    {

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {

And in this way, any method will be automatically a victim of our aspect ;) Easy, don't?

I invite you to try it by yourself!

This was an introduction to a very simple aspect. The aspects's world is very much extensive and interesting! Many wonderful things can be done but, however, like everything in software, I recommend you: always analyze which are the real advantages and disadvantages of introducing a new practice, framework or whatever. Aspects are not always needed. Remember: "Having a good hammer doesn't means that every problem is a nail".

In my experience, the use of aspects is a growing trend, but because many people is getting used to it and not being afraid of it. I'll try to come back with new things about Postsharp's aspects.