Accessing the return value from a Dsl

Hi,

I am trying to create a Dsl which will have instances that live in
individual Dsl .rb files and then run them from the CLR.

I want to create and set the values of the Clr object in IronRuby and
then somehow have access to the CLR object after the .rb Dsl instance
file has run.

Here is my Clr object which is very simple at the moment:

namespace Horn.Core.Dsl
{
public class BuildMetaData : IBuildMetaData
{
public string Description { get; set; }
}
}

I have the following module which I am using to specify my Dsl and which
will create an instance of the BuildMetaData specified above:

module MetaBuilder
module Dsl
module Main
attr_accessor :metadata
def install(name, &block)
@metadata = Horn::Core::Dsl::BuildMetaData.new
yield self if block_given?
end

  def description(desc)
     @metadata.Description = desc
  end

  def get_metadata
      @metadata
  end

end

end
end

include MetaBuilder::Dsl::Main

I somehow want to be able to get the @metadata property from the Clr
code after an instance of the Dsl has ran.

An instance of the Dsl looks like this currently:

install :horn do
description “A .NET build and dependency manager”
end

My C# code looks like this currently:

var engine = Ruby.CreateEngine();
engine.Runtime.LoadAssembly(typeof(BuildMetaData).Assembly);
engine.ExecuteFile(buildFile);
var klass = engine.Runtime.Globals.GetVariable(“get_metadata”);

Is there anyway I can get at the @metadata property without having to
pollute the Dsl instance?

For that matter is my approach reasonable or is there perhaps a better
way?

Thanks in advance

Paul

Hi,

For anyone who is interested, I managed to solve this by creating a
singleton to house an instance of the BuildMetaData class.

My Ruby code ended up looking like this:

module MetaBuilder
module Dsl
module Main

  def install(name, &block)
    yield self if block_given?
  end

  def get_from(name, url)
    puts name
    puts url
  end

  def description(desc)
     meta.metadata.Description = desc
  end

  class MetaDataAccessor
    attr_accessor :metadata

    private
    def initialize
      @metadata = Horn::Core::Dsl::BuildMetaData.new
    end

    public
    def self.instance
      @@instance ||= new
    end

    def self.get_metadata
        @metadata
    end
  end
end

end
end

def meta
MetaBuilder::Dsl::Main::MetaDataAccessor.instance
end

class ClrAccessor
def get_build_metadata
meta.metadata
end
end

include MetaBuilder::Dsl::Main

I created the MetaDataAccessor to keep a singleton BuildMetaData
instance.

I could not work out the C# code to access a fully qualified class that
is nested in between modules so I created the ClrAccessor class to
provide access from the Clr.

My C# code ended up looking like this:

var engine = Ruby.CreateEngine();
engine.Runtime.LoadAssembly(typeof(BuildMetaData).Assembly);
engine.ExecuteFile(buildFile);
var klass = engine.Runtime.Globals.GetVariable(“ClrAccessor”);
var instance = engine.Operations.CreateInstance(klass);
buildMetaData = (BuildMetaData)engine.Operations.InvokeMember(instance,
“get_build_metadata”);

I am fairly sure there is an easier way but for me it is progress.

Any input into this “round the houses” approach would be appreciated.

Cheers

Paul

Paul Cowan wrote:

Hi,

I am trying to create a Dsl which will have instances that live in
individual Dsl .rb files and then run them from the CLR.

I want to create and set the values of the Clr object in IronRuby and
then somehow have access to the CLR object after the .rb Dsl instance
file has run.

Here is my Clr object which is very simple at the moment:

namespace Horn.Core.Dsl
{
public class BuildMetaData : IBuildMetaData
{
public string Description { get; set; }
}
}

I have the following module which I am using to specify my Dsl and which
will create an instance of the BuildMetaData specified above:

module MetaBuilder
module Dsl
module Main
attr_accessor :metadata
def install(name, &block)
@metadata = Horn::Core::Dsl::BuildMetaData.new
yield self if block_given?
end

  def description(desc)
     @metadata.Description = desc
  end

  def get_metadata
      @metadata
  end

end

end
end

include MetaBuilder::Dsl::Main

I somehow want to be able to get the @metadata property from the Clr
code after an instance of the Dsl has ran.

An instance of the Dsl looks like this currently:

install :horn do
description “A .NET build and dependency manager”
end

My C# code looks like this currently:

var engine = Ruby.CreateEngine();
engine.Runtime.LoadAssembly(typeof(BuildMetaData).Assembly);
engine.ExecuteFile(buildFile);
var klass = engine.Runtime.Globals.GetVariable(“get_metadata”);

Is there anyway I can get at the @metadata property without having to
pollute the Dsl instance?

For that matter is my approach reasonable or is there perhaps a better
way?

Thanks in advance

Paul

What scope you would like the instance of BuildMetaData to appear in?
There are basically 2 possibilities:

  1. global

Any global Ruby constants will appear in Runtime.Globals dictionary. So
you can just assign the instance into a constant:

MyInstance = Horn::Core::Dsl::BuildMetaData.new

and get it back in C# via Globals.GetVariable(“MyInstance”)

  1. in a DLR execution scope

This is a little bit more tricky since Ruby doesn’t have a concept of
execution scopes (unlike Python that has modules). IronRuby has a hook
in method definition that publishes a method defined on a “main” object
into the DLR scope. The “main” object is a singleton of Object class
that Ruby creates for top-level scope self:

ruby -e ‘p self’
main

In IronRuby you can do this:

foo.rb:
def self.my_method
123
end

C#:
var scope = engine.ExecuteFile(“foo.rb”);
var my_method = scope.GetVariable<Func>(“my_method”)
Console.WriteLine(my_method());

I’m still looking for improvements to DLR scope interop, so this might
actually change in future.

Tomas