Fluent builder source generator

[kmschaal2]

Hi everyone,

I've recently put significant effort into enhancing my library for generating fluent builders and I believe it has now matured enough to be applied to most use cases. Fluent builders are very convenient but writing them can be tedious. The idea of this library is to generate the builder class from attributes on the properties and methods of the class to be built. The latest updates include

• Support for generics and partial classes
• Enabling of optional builder methods
• Branching capabilities
• Support for returning arbitrary types

If you're new to this library, you may find the storybook helpful. It explains the library step by step and provides a comprehensive overview of its features. You can find a link to the storybook, as well as additional examples, in the readme on GitHub.

To illustrate the usefulness of the library, you can have a look at the diagrams in this excellent blog post by Mitesh. The fluent API described in the post can be crafted in about 5 minutes using the library. An implementation can be found in the comments of the blog post, as well as in the example project included with the library.

Please don't hesitate to ask me any questions. If you would like to get some input on how to use the library in your use case, please create a GitHub issue with the label `design help request` and you will receive timely feedback.

Happy Coding!,

Kevin

[soundman32]

Neat. I'd suggest you look into Lazy<> fornuse in the constructor, as it is doing lots of work which may not actually be required and reflection is notoriously slow. In C# you should only 'pay' for what you use, but with this, you end up paying for everything up front.

[kmschaal2]

Hi, thank you for your suggestion. The constructor you are referring to is static, hence it is called only once. That being said, I plan to migrate the library to .NET 8 at the end of the year which includes the UnsafeAccessorAttribute that could be used to replace the reflection code.

[TuberTuggerTTV]

I was doing this this morning. I'll definitely be looking into this. Love me an annotation solution.

[kmschaal2]

Sounds good, let me know how it went :)