VB2008 : Upcoming features

[Merrion]

Just a heads up on one of the new features in VB9 (aka VB.Net 2008) : XML Literals

"XML Literals" is the ability to embed XML syntax directly into VB code. For example,

Dim ele as XElement = <Customer/>

What this means is that you can code your XML (and XLinq) directly in VB and have the compiler worry about all the ghastly DOM navigation that goes on behind the scenes. To see what this means I defer to this excellent example from Beth Massi:

Private Sub CreateClass()

        Dim CustomerSchema As XDocument = XDocument.Load(CurDir() & "\customer.xsd")

 

        Dim fields = From field In CustomerSchema...<xs:element> _

                     Where field.@type IsNot Nothing _

                     Select Name = field.@name, Type = field.@type

 

 

        Dim customer = <customer>

Public Class Customer 

    <%= From field In fields Select <f>     

        Private m_<%= field.Name %> As <%= GetVBPropType(field.Type) %></f>.Value %>

 

        <%= From field In fields Select <p>     

        Public Property <%= field.Name %> As <%= GetVBPropType(field.Type) %>

            Get 

                Return m_<%= field.Name %>  

            End Get

            Set(ByVal value As <%= GetVBPropType(field.Type) %>)

                m_<%= field.Name %>  = value 

            End Set

        End Property</p>.Value %>                        

End Class</customer>

 

        My.Computer.FileSystem.WriteAllText("Customer.vb", customer.Value, _

False, System.Text.Encoding.ASCII)

 

    End Sub

 

    Private Function GetVBPropType(ByVal xmlType As String) As String

        Select Case xmlType

            Case "xs:string"

                Return "String"

            Case "xs:int"

                Return "Integer"

            Case "xs:decimal"

                Return "Decimal"

            Case "xs:boolean"

                Return "Boolean"

            Case "xs:dateTime", "xs:date"

                Return "Date"

            Case Else

                Return "'TODO: Define Type"

        End Select

    End Function

Any thoughts?

[penagate]

To be quite honest, it looks horrible.

[Merrion]

It looks a good deal nicer than the equivalend CodeDom code to generate classes from a XSD would...ufortunately it does bring up bad memories of old stylee ASP...