Marking itĬorrect for them often stops other people from even reading the question and possibly providing the real "correct" answer. There are such things as Vacations and Holidays which may reduce timely activity, and until the person asking the question can test your answer, it is not correct just because you think it is. PS - Don't mark answers on other people's questions. Your brain is smarter than any micro-chip."
FORMAT AS IFORMAT PROVIDER UPDATE
If another system does not exist I'll want to update this model. Net? Currently I'm using a hashtable to pass in type keys with format strings via a decorator pattern for string builder, but So, before I invest too much time in constructing own own system to handle this, does this functionality already exist in. However, the same IFormatProvider cannot be handed off to String.Format, or DateTime.ToString(). Granted as well, my above example is depicting a use case that I can (and have to a degree) implement manually. All of this is encapsulated in a singular interface that provides formats for all data types, and if the type doesn't exist, it goes default. While Larry can output dates in a dd mmm yyyy format, while creating a custom interpretation for the Īnd Point structures. Now, Bob can implement I format provider and have all Decimal types output like currency, and all floats have only 4 sig digs. It's a crude, simplistic example, but to me this is what a "Provider" should do especially when it is called IFormatProvider. StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(0x1000) ToCSV(object values, IFormatProvider formats) Where is the functionality to provide the format for these objects in a late-binding fashion. If it truly was an IFormat Provider it wouldn't just provide two customized format objects that are both sealed and thus not reusable Even ICustomFormatterĪSSUMES the developer is going to provide the format string. the method, GetString() would take the type and return the formatted string for you. That could be used in a ToString() for those types that need it, or could be applied to a String.Format() format string. IFormatter would of course have a method and a property. IFormatProvider where the simple idea of "IFormatter GetFormat(Type type)" exists. Net is to custom format EVERY SINGLE PRIMITIVE TYPE. I'm performing some kind of serialization, doesn't matter what, but the end result must be displayable in a very specific format. Now expand that model to more and more data types. It's designed to serialize the data not worry about "human I cannot "write" the provider for Dates and Times in order to give to a ToString(), or String.Format(), or even for my own custom data format process which sometimes needs to have customized formatting for different data elements.įor example, the XML Serialization of a DateTime (when local) is "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss:fffffffzzzzzz" which has absolutely nothing to do with any culture info whatsoever. Just as well you can write the implementation of the IServiceProvider,īut typically in those situations you are also writing the consuming code, and if not you must allow for all possible type requests coming through if you don't want VS to break.īut so far, the ONLY thing IFormatProvider exists for is to be implemented by CultureInfo (and it's subseqent related clases DateTimeFormatInfo & NumberFormInfo.) That's it. You can implement the CodeDomProvider yourself, and instead of returning the same as the base class, you can implement other methods of providing the appropriate implementations. Because for all of these examples it is almost universal that you are writing at MINIMUM the CONSUMER side of the equation, if not BOTH. These two examples are of many, but most of the depiction is MOOT. THis provider is even more specific that it actually is expected to return an ICodeCompiler or ICodeGenerator based upon the request.
FORMAT AS IFORMAT PROVIDER CODE
The same could be said for the CodeCOM "CodeDomProvider", which is the primary (only) way to get a specific language's "Generator", and which is how Visual Studio generates code for the forms or dataset designer, etc. Thus far in my experience this has been true. The Name being what it is, the resulting object should be "service" of some sort. YOu call the method and provide a type, and if that type is available, the implementing object returns an instance of that IServiceProvider is designed in an identical fashion. I've worked with more on the extensible side of Visual Studio.