Thursday, April 24, 2008

Great fluent interface sample: the fluent repeater

by Fabrice Marguerie via Fabrice's weblog on 4/24/2008 1:52:00 PM

I'm not that much a fan of fluent interfaces, but in some cases they are well fit.

A great example is the fluent repeater created by Adrian Aisemberg. It's also a good example if you don't know what a fluent interface is.

Here is sample code that uses it:

Repeat.Call<string>(Save).WithParameters("myfile.txt").UntilSucceeds.Start(10);
Repeat.Call(Ping).PauseBetweenCalls(2000).Start(100);

Some more:

Repeat.Call(Open).InBackgroundThread.At(ThreadPriority.Lowest).
        OnSuccessCall(Opened).OnExceptionCall(Failed).Start();

This could be written in the following way using a non fluent interface:

Repeater repeater = new Repeater();
repeater.Method = Open;
repeater.InBackgroundThread = true;
repeater.ThreadPriority = ThreadPriority.Lowest;
repeater.Success += Opened;
repeater.Exception += Failed;
repeater.Start();

Which version do you prefer?