Using IronPython to Configure Castle Windsor

By Michael Foord -
Castle Windsor is a popular .NET Inversion of Control container, but it can be complex to configure. A blogger, who's name I can't discover (put your name on your blogs guys!), has written two articles on using IronPython to configure Castle Windsor.
Castle Windsor is a very popular IoC container in the .Net world. Like almost all other containers it can be configured using either a fluent interface or an xml-based configuration file.

The fluent interface has the advantage of being strongly typed, what spares you a lot of errors caused by typos. On the other hand, it is hard coded and can’t be changed easily without recompiling (Actually you could use an IoC container to load your IoC container configuration dynamically but it give a rise to the question: “How do you configure the container to load its own configuration?” )

The other option is to use an xml file. Despite being the most used solution in almost all containers it is really a very ugly solution. The configuration file can get very big and very complicated.

As I am reading IronPython in Action from Manning Publications, I thought I could configure Windsor using Python and a very tiny DSL. IronPython is an interpreted language for .Net framework. It combines the elegance of Python with the strength of .Net. Since it being interpreted it is a suitable solution for configuration.
In the last article I introduced a small Castle Windsor configuration tool using IronPython. This tool enabled us to add service implementation in an easer to read way. On the other hand advanced usages like optional and constructer parameters were not possible.

In this article I will continue developing Pysor (As I called it!) to accept parameters. Before introducing the new functionality I will show what are parameters and when and how would you want to use them. For the sake of demonstration I will borrow the demo application from the very good article series from Simone Busoli about Castle Windsor. If you didn’t read it then go read it all and come back.

Comments

  1. Damian Powell9/14/2009 3:04 pm

    The blogger's name is Moukarram Kabbash. There are now three articles in the series.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Extending Abobe Flash Player and AIR with Python and Ruby

By Michael Foord -
An intriguing blog entry about an Adobe experimental project. It is a C/C++ cross- compiler for the flash player and AIR. This means that you can (will be able to?) cross-compile the Python / Ruby/ lots of other language runtimes and then run them in Flash. The blog entry contrasts this approach to the DLR which requires the re-implementation of dynamic languages - hence IronPython and IronRuby. The project is already beyond proof-of concept, they even have Quake III cross-compiled and running in Flash. Extending Adobe Flash Player and AIR with C/C++ Cross-Compiler Quake 3 has already been ported to managed code , but this is even more impressive. Whether the Python interpreter can be cross-compiled to run on top of another runtime (with completely different basic types), without changing the language semantics at all, has yet to be proved - but it is a very interesting project. (It also means that Python/Ruby will possibly be enabled only by additional optional downloads - but don'
Read more

Further Adventures of the Debugger

By Michael Foord -
Harry Pierson (Microsoft IronPython PM) has been experimenting with writing an IronPython debugger ( ipydbg ) on top of the .NET MDbg APIs. When we last left him , he had implemented Just My Code (JMC) support allowing you to step into IronPython code. Since then he has made a lot of progress including a colourful REPL (interactive console) and solving some difficult problems around getting to real values behind boxed IronPython variables (needed for showing local variables). He has blogged extensively on what he has been up to (more recent posts last): Showing Source Code Colorful Console IronPython ConsoleColorMgr (the colorful console code pulled out into a separate IronPython module) A Little Hack...err...Cleanup Getting Local Variables Displaying Values Command Routing Getting Arguments REPL Console A lot of functionality is now present. In the command routing entry Harry outlines the seven commands supported by the debugger so far: Continue, Quit, Show Stack Trace, Show Locals,
Read more

IronPython Tools for Visual Studio CTP3

By Michael Foord -
At PyCon this year Dino Veihland announced IronPython Tools for Visual Studio, an extension to Visual Studio 2010 for working with IronPython. It features Python syntax highlighting, awesome auto-complete (intellisense) and a host of other features for working with IronPython code in Visual Studio. It can be used with the free Visual Studio shell and doesn't require you to own a full copy of Visual Studio. The third CTP (Community Technology Preview) has been made available for download. IronPython Tools for Visual Studio We are happy to announce a minor update to the IronPython Tools for Visual Studio.  IronPython Tools for Visual Studio (IPyTools) is a set of extensions available for Visual Studio 2010 which supports development of IronPython applications.  This release is our 3rd Community Technical Preview (CTP) and builds upon the previous two releases.  The release is a minor update which includes bug fixes and a number of small features.  You can download the latest rel
Read more