Stream Helper Methods in C-Sharp

The stream classes provide all of the low-level methods necessary for encoding and decoding Ice types. However, it would be tedious and error-prone to manually encode complex Ice types such as classes, structs, and dictionaries using these low-level functions. For this reason, the Slice compiler optionally generates helper methods for streaming complex Ice types.

We will use the following Slice definitions to demonstrate the language mapping:

Slice

module M {
    sequence<...> Seq;
    dictionary<...> Dict;
    struct S {
        ...
    };
    enum E { ... };
    class C {
        ...
    };
};

The Slice compiler generates the corresponding helper methods shown below:

C#

namespace M
{
    public sealed class SeqHelper
    {
        public static int[] read(Ice.InputStream _in);
        public static void write(Ice.OutputStream _out, int[] _v);
        public static Ice.OptionalFormat optionalFormat();
    }

    public sealed class DictHelper
    {
        public static Dictionary<...> read(Ice.InputStream _in);
        public static void write(Ice.OutputStream _out, Dictionary<...> _v);
        public static Ice.OptionalFormat optionalFormat();
    }

    public sealed class SHelper
    {
        public static S read(Ice.InputStream _in);
        public static void write(Ice.OutputStream _out, S _v);
        public static Ice.OptionalFormat optionalFormat();
    }

    public sealed class EHelper
    {
        public static M.E read(Ice.InputStream _in);
        public static void write(Ice.OutputStream _out, M.E _v);
        public static Ice.OptionalFormat optionalFormat();
    }

    public sealed class CHelper
    {
        public CHelper(Ice.InputStream _in);
        public void read();
        public static void write(Ice.OutputStream _out, C _v);
        public M.C value
        {
            get;
        }
        public static Ice.OptionalFormat optionalFormat();
        // ...
    }

    public sealed class CPrxHelper : Ice.ObjectPrxHelperBase, CPrx
    {
        public static CPrx read(Ice.InputStream _in);
        public static void write(Ice.OutputStream _out, CPrx _v);
        public static Ice.OptionalFormat optionalFormat();
    }
}

The optionalFormat method simplifies the task of writing optional values.

The Slice compiler also generates the following methods for struct types:

C#

public struct S {
    ...
    public void ice_read(Ice.InputStream in);
    public void ice_write(Ice.OutputStream out);
}

Be aware that a call to CHelper.read does not result in the immediate extraction of an Ice object. The value property of the given CHelper object is updated when readPendingObjects is invoked on the input stream.

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