XPO_EasyFields

XPO Simplified Criteria Syntax allows you to obtain your persistent objects properties via Object Orientated method. This is plugin is meant to replicate Oliver Sturms XPOFieldSync, and hopefully in time improve from the excellent idea of Olivers.

Instead of:

Dim MyCustomersStartingWithB as XPCollection(Of Customer)(New BinaryOperator("CompanyTradingName", "B%", Like))

After running XPOEasyFields you can now do:

Dim MyCustomersStartingWithB as XPCollection(Of Customer)(New BinaryOperator(Customer.Fields.CompanyTradingName, "B%", Like))

This not only easier to identify fields and relations via Intellisense, but is Strongly Typed, meaning if you wanted to Refactor your object and change the CompanyTradingName property to say TradingName, you will end up with Compile Errors highlighting where you have used that field, unlike the string representation which is perfectly valid code until it executes at Runtime and collapes in a heap ;)

There are some differences between XPO_EasyFields? and XPOFieldSync

• XPOFieldSync would create a region with a static name and replace this region everytime. This was an issue if you would “organise” your class to have your nested classes at different positions to your variable and property declarations, XPOFieldSync would see that there wasn’t a region create a new one and duplicate the class. XPOEasyFields replaces the 3 sections (FieldsClass, Fields Property,Fields Variable) all in place so it doesn’t matter if you have organised your code, it will update anyways ;)
• XPOFieldSync offered an automatic way to update the class, basically each time you changed a property XPOFieldSync would update the definition, XPOEasyFields doesn’t include this functionality as I found the automatic syncing slowed down the IDE too much for me with constant text being replaced.
• XPOFieldSync still has an issue (as of March 2010) with XPCollections (that was introduced by a new version of DXCore in 2009) whereby it will skip them when generating the shadowed FieldsClass?. XPOEasyFields seems to capture all fields within your class and being in the Open Source community should mean any issues identified can be fixed by any number of people.

More details on this plugin are available here.

This plugin requires CodeRush. You can locate a free trial of CodeRush here.

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