Using Expression-Bodied Members in C#6.0
So it's been a while since I've written a blog post (far too long if you ask me). I'll not go into too much detail, but I've been busy doing some life things. I recently changed jobs, moved, and started working on a great deal of other projects that just consume all my time, and I haven't had time to share any of my thoughts recently.
With that said, I do have something I wish to talk about at the moment, and that is a new feature found in C#6.0: Expression-Bodied Members.
This feature, in my opinion, is one of the more useful features of the recent language update. It opens a great deal of doors and has shortened a lot of my code substantially, which is always good. (For some reason, we strive to keep the number of characters/lines on our source code to a minimum.) It offers us the ability to take certain methods and properties, which would have otherwise taken up a fair amount of space, and shrink them down to a much more manageable level.
However, before we talk about this feature, we need to talk about all the parts of it. So let's begin with the most important part of an expression-bodied member: the expression.
What is an expression?
We're going to take a definition from webopedia (see http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/E/expression.html) which should sum it up fairly well:
In programming, an expression is any legal combination of symbols that represents a value.
This is a pretty basic definition, but should work to serve our needs quite well. When we use the term expression we mean a fairly simple set of instructions that return a value. Do note: I bolded "return a value" for a reason. If the set of instructions do not return a value, then they are not an expression, and cannot make up an expression-bodied member. (We'll see this isn't entirely true shortly.)
A few examples of what we mean by expressions when discussing them in C#:
2 + 5
x * 4
"EBrown"
name ?? "No Name"
person.ToString()
The last one might surprise you - yes, calling .ToString() on something is an expression, as .ToString() returns a value. The second-to-last might surprise you as well, but it's pretty simple: if name is null, then the expression evaluates to "No Name".
Do note: expressions don't have to return a non-null value. The person.ToString() call above could potentially return a null value, and that's perfectly OK. It's still an expression. The value itself has no bearing on the definition of the term, only whether or not something actually returns a valid value. This is an important concept to bear in mind, as not all of our expressions have non-null values.
So what do expressions usually look like in C#?
Any series of tokens that follow a return token, up to the first subsequent semicolon (;) are an expression. So for all of our examples above, they might look like:
return 2 + 5;
return x * 4;
return "EBrown";
return name ?? "No Name";
return person.ToString();
Mind you, expressions don't have to follow a return statement. Consider that 2+5 is still an expression in the following example:
var myString = "Some string " + (2 + 5).ToString() + " with numbers in it.";
But we also have several other expressions:
2 + 5
(2 + 5).ToString()
"Some string " + (2 + 5).ToString() + " with numbers in it."
All three of these are expressions, in their own right. All three of them also contain other expressions. This is an important concept to understand, in the expression 2 + 5, there are actually two other expressions: 2 and 5. These are both expressions as well.
What does an expression-bodied member look like, in C#?
There are two types of expression-bodied members in C#:
- Expression-bodied readonly properties;
- Expression-bodied methods;
Both types of expression-bodied members in C# look something like the following:
member => expression;
It's very simple, you provide a member, the "lambda" sign (=>), and an expression. You can also provide the standard member modifiers in the member itself as well. (Access modifiers, attributes, etc.) It's a regular member, it just uses a different body syntax. You should note that there are no braces in play, it's just a member and expression.
An example of a C# expression-bodied member:
public override string ToString() => $"Name: {Name}";
Note that there is no return statement. An expression-bodied member always returns a value. (Except in the case of void methods.) That is why we just talked about expressions to such detail. We need something to return. Something to give back.
What about void methods?
You can still use an expression-bodied member in a void method, it simply has to have a void return type, or be a disposable call. The following code is completely valid C#6.0:
public void MethodA() { }
public void MethodB() => MethodA(); // `MethodA()` is `void`, and `MethodB()` is `void`
public string MethodC() { return "MethodC"; }
public void MethodD() => MethodC(); // The result of `MethodC()` is disposable
The following is invalid:
public void MethodA() { }
public string MethodB() => MethodA(); // The expression returns a `void` type, but a `string` is expected
public void MethodC() => "MethodC"; // The expression returns a `void` type, but the value is not disposable
An expression-bodied member with a return type can mentally be rewritten as:
member { return expression; }
An expression-bodied member with a void return type can mentally be rewritten as:
member { expression; }
How do I use expression-bodied members?
It's pretty simple to use an expression-bodied member. You have two options: an expression-bodied readonly property, and an expression-bodied method. Both of these are trivial to use, the only difference is a minor issue in syntax.
Just like a normal readonly property, and expression-bodied readonly property only has a get-method within it. The difference is syntax. As we may recall, a normal readonly property may look something like:
public double TotalPrice { get { return Quantity * Price; } }
To convert this to an expression-bodied member, we simply replace the getter with an expression of the previous syntax:
public double TotalPrice => Quantity * Price;
This is a property bodied by an expression. You'll note that there are no parameters passed, so as far as other code is concerned it's treated just like a normal property, that only has a getter.
The only difference between a method and a property being bodied by an expression is that a method has the requisite parenthesis in the definition.
public override string ToString() { return $"Price: {Price}, Quantity: {Quantity}"; }
As a method, could be rewritten as:
public override string ToString() => $"Price: {Price}, Quantity: {Quantity}";
As you can see, in both cases we omitted the return altogether. Properties and methods that specify a non-void return type implicitly return whatever the result of the expression is.
A real life example of the benefits of expression-bodied members
For this I'm going to use a partial copy of a class I wrote for a C# library I'm working on. (I'm omitting all the comments and attributes, for brevity.)
This is (most of) a Rectangle class I wrote in a drawing library (for a clone of Windows Forms for XNA). This first version is the version without expression bodied members at all. You can find the most recent version at: https://github.com/EBrown8534/Framework/blob/master/Evbpc.Framework/Drawing/Rectangle.cs
public struct Rectangle
{
public Rectangle(Point location, Size size)
{
Location = location;
Size = size;
}
public int Bottom { get { return Location.Y + Size.Height; } }
public bool IsEmpty { get { return this == Empty; } }
public int Left { get { return Location.X; } }
public Point Location { get; }
public int Right { get { return Location.X + Size.Width; } }
public Size Size { get; }
public int Top { get { return Location.X; } }
public override bool Equals(object obj) { return obj is Rectangle && (Rectangle)obj == this; }
public override int GetHashCode() { return base.GetHashCode(); }
public override string ToString()
{
return $"({Location.X},{Location.Y},{Size.Width},{Size.Height})";
}
public static bool operator ==(Rectangle left, Rectangle right)
{
return left.Location == right.Location && left.Size == right.Size;
}
public static bool operator !=(Rectangle left, Rectangle right)
{
return left.Location != right.Location || left.Size != right.Size;
}
public static readonly Rectangle Empty = new Rectangle(0, 0, 0, 0);
}
Pretty simple, right? I'm not going to discuss any of the other C#6.0 features that I've used, just know that there are some.
Now, let's see what this looks like if we replace all the smaller methods with expressions.
public struct Rectangle
{
public Rectangle(Point location, Size size)
{
Location = location;
Size = size;
}
public int Bottom => Location.Y + Size.Height;
public bool IsEmpty => this == Empty;
public int Left => Location.X;
public Point Location { get; }
public int Right => Location.X + Size.Width;
public Size Size { get; }
public int Top => Location.Y;
public override bool Equals(object obj) => obj is Rectangle && (Rectangle)obj == this;
public override int GetHashCode() => base.GetHashCode();
public override string ToString() => $"({Location.X},{Location.Y},{Size.Width},{Size.Height})";
public static bool operator ==(Rectangle left, Rectangle right) => left.Location == right.Location && left.Size == right.Size;
public static bool operator !=(Rectangle left, Rectangle right) => left.Location != right.Location || left.Size != right.Size;
public static readonly Rectangle Empty = new Rectangle(0, 0, 0, 0);
}
A little cleaner, yes? The horizontal space of our code has been significantly reduced for most of the methods and properties. A lot of that clutter is now gone.
Limitations of Expression-Bodied Members
One of the major limitations of expression-bodied members is exception throwing. Exceptions cannot be thrown directly from an expression-bodied member. You can still do things that would throw exceptions, but you cannot actually throw anything. This is due to the fact that throw ... is a statement, rather than an expression.
See this Stack Overflow question and answer for more information on this limitation.
DO's and DON'Ts of Expression-Bodied Members
Here are a few of the general do's and don'ts I use when determining if I can use an expression-bodied member:
And the last one, which you may or may not want to adopt (I have):