Generic SparkViewBase in a standalone app.

[Stéphane]

Hi,
I am building a newsletter service that uses spark to generate the
HTML.
I can get Spark to work fine in my standalone application if the
DefaultPageBaseType is a simple class inheriting from SparkViewBase

So I have a ViewData class inheriting from SparkViewBase with a Model
property of type EmailData containing all the info to build up the
html, I then access it in the view with Model.Xxx

What I would like is to have the ViewData class agnostic of the model
it is going to present to the view.
So I changed my code to be as follow :

public class ViewData<T> : SparkViewBase
{
public T Model {get; set;}
}

In the constructor of my HtmlBuilder<T> (T being the Model) I
instanciate the engine like that:

engine = new SparkViewEngine(setup);
engine.DefaultPageBaseType = typeof(ViewData<T>).FullName;

And finally to create my view I do :

var view = (ViewData<T>)engine.CreateInstance(descriptor);


Everything seems ok but at runtime :

Unhandled Exception: Spark.Compiler.CompilerException: Dynamic view
compilation
failed.
\Temp\hxntjkr1.0.cs(10,81): error CS1056: Unexpected character '`'
l\Temp\hxntjkr1.0.cs(10,81): error CS1514: { expected
\Temp\hxntjkr1.0.cs(10,81): error CS1519: Invalid token '`' in class,
struct, or interface member declaration
\Temp\hxntjkr1.0.cs(10,84): error CS1001: Identifier expected
\Temp\hxntjkr1.0.cs(10,145): error CS1003: Syntaxerror, ']' expected
\Temp\hxntjkr1.0.cs(10,145): error CS1519: Invalid token '=' in class,
struct, or interface member declaration
\Temp\hxntjkr1.0.cs(10,162): error CS1519: Invalid token '=' in class,
struct, or interface member declaration
\Temp\hxntjkr1.0.cs(10,170): error CS1519: Invalid token ',' in class,
struct, or interface member declaration
\Temp\hxntjkr1.0.cs(10,186): error CS1519: Invalid token '=' in class,
struct, or interface member declaration

From what I understand Spark doesnt understand the <> and the []given
by typeof(ViewData<T>).FullName due to the special character generated
by generics.
But this is working when used in MVC right? (I assume) So how can I
get this to work in my standalone app?

Thanks for help,

Stéphane


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[TMFReason]

I'm not sure if there is any fundamental issue with your generics, but
on the view side, how are you declaring your model? Are you using
something like <viewdata model ="IEnumerable[[EmailData]]"/> with ['s
in place of >'s? A simple answer, but it would match the errors you
are getting.

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[Stéphane]

No I have nothing in the view. The view is not declaring any
viewmodel, since the code that instanciate the view is setting the
DefaultPageBaseType Property using typeOf().FullName
But should I then build the string manually in my code because typeof
returns me those unhandled characters? I'll give it a try and reply in
a minute.

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[Stéphane]

Ha! Got It!
I tried multiple syntaxes and the last one, desperate try, was the
correct one apparently :)

public HtmlGenerator()
{
var setup = new SparkSettings()
.AddNamespace("System")
.AddNamespace("System.Collections.Generic")
.AddNamespace(typeof (Program).Namespace)
.AddNamespace(typeof
(System.Linq.Enumerable).Namespace);

engine = new SparkViewEngine(setup);
engine.DefaultPageBaseType = "ViewData<EmailModel>";
FAIL //engine.DefaultPageBaseType =
"ConsoleApplication1.ViewData[[ConsoleApplication1.EmailModel]]";
FAIL //engine.DefaultPageBaseType =
"ViewData[[EmailModel]]";
FAIL //engine.DefaultPageBaseType =
typeof(ViewData<T>).FullName;
}


So I can actually write : engine.DefaultPageBaseType = "ViewData<"+
typeof(T).FullName +">";
and that works. If I can get rid of the string completely, that would
be even better, but that's doing it already. :) Thanks for putting me
on the way!

[attilah]

Hi Stéphane!

The thing you are doing is a good direction, when I've faced with this
problem I had to make a Type extension method which generated the type
name for the generic parameter.

Offline I'm sending you some of my files what I'm currently using and
can be a good starter for you and with little modification it can
serve you well.

Thanks,
Attila

[Stéphane]

Thank you very much. The extensions are helpful :)
That's pretty much what I was about to write anyway.
Now, time to put this together and start building spark templates :)

Any status on the intellisense plugin for VS2010?

[Rob G]

Hi Stéphane,

I published this post last night with an update about the VS2010 extension. I'm hoping to release an alpha very soon.

Regards,

Rob

[Louis DeJardin]

Great post, and thanks for the effort! I’ll forward the feedback to the VS team if you’d like. :)