Extensible productivity tool for exposing common classes in application building

• US 20050172265A1
• Filed: 01/29/2004
• Published: 08/04/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 01/29/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Rivard, John J., Whitney, Joseph Tyler, Schmelzer, James Roy Jr., Rajan, Shamez, Brigham, Robert Allan II, Kuklinski, Paul Stanley Jr.
• Granted Patent: US 7,383,531 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/120
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/24 Object-oriented

Abstract

Architecture for developing an application. The architecture provides an entry point to commonly used classes of an application development framework. A developer begins a project which predefines a set of collection classes. An exposer component includes an identifier component and a compiler for generating accessors to the collected classes. The identifier uses an attribute on a collection class which a compiler dynamically extracts in order to generate accessors to the desired collected classes and compiles the generated collection classes for use in the namespace.

Claims

1. A system that facilitates building an application using a development framework, the system comprising an exposer component that exposes a set of classes, which set includes at least one of a framework class of the framework and a project class of a project, and which at least one of the framework class and the project class is used to develop the application.

2. The system of claim 1, the set of classes includes at least one of a class related to a computing device on which the application will be run, a class that provides information about the application, an object that provides information about a user that runs the application, and a class that is commonly used in the project.

3. The system of claim 2, the class that is commonly used is related to one of a form, a web service, a resource, and a setting.

4. The system of claim 1 facilitates creation of a single entry point to common classes for building the application.

5. The system of claim 1, the exposer component exposes a class of a plurality of namespaces of the framework.

6. The system of claim 1, the exposer component facilitates creation of a namespace that provides hierarchical access to instances of classes that are commonly used to develop the application.

7. The system of claim 6, the namespace includes a default set of the classes.

8. The system of claim 1, the exposer component facilitates creation of a namespace that provides hierarchical access to instances of classes that are used more frequently than other classes.

9. The system of claim 1 is extensible such that a new class can be exposed that is provided in accordance with at least one of an expansion of the framework and an improvement to the framework.

10. A computer readable medium having stored thereon computer executable instructions for carrying out the system of claim 1.

11. A computer employing the system of claim 1.

12. The system of claim 1, the set of classes is a top-level set that includes one or more classes related to the application, a computer running the application, a user running the application, a form of the project, a web service referenced in the project, a resource of the project, and a setting of the application.

13. A system that facilitates building an application within a development framework, comprising:

a compiler that compiles code; and

an identification component that receives search information related to class information of a class to be identified, which identification component signals the compiler to search the code based on the search information and tag the class information.

14. The system of claim 13, the compiler tags the class information during compilation of the code.

15. The system of claim 13, the compiler provides user access to the tagged information.

16. The system of claim 13, the class information is tagged utilizing a compiler attribute.

17. The system of claim 13, the tagged class information is pulled out and compiled separately with respect to compiling the code.

18. The system of claim 13, the class is generated dynamically, and includes strong types and bounded access that points only to an object of the class.

19. The system of claim 13, the system dynamically generates types in a namespace that reference internal resources.

20. A system that facilitates building an application within a development framework, the system comprising a compiler that compiles code, which compiler receives search information associated with class information, searches the code based on the search information, and tags the class information.

21. The system of claim 20 dynamically generates a class that refers to an internal resource by pulling out the tagged class information and compiling the tagged class information.

22. The system of claim 20, the compiler compiles the tagged class information to generate a class that facilitates user access to an internal resource.

23. A method of aggregating functionality in support of building an application, comprising:

identifying a class of objects to be returned from source code;

searching the source code for one or more of the objects;

collecting the one or more objects that are found;

generating a property for each of the one or more objects that are found; and

accessing the one or more objects that have the associated property.

24. The method of claim 23, further comprising grouping the one or more objects that are associated with a given property, into the class.

25. The method of claim 23, further comprising associating the class with an indicator that is unique to the class.

26. The method of claim 23, the one or more objects that are found, are collected according to an attribute.

27. The method of claim 23, further comprising compiling the one or more objects that are collected.

28. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing a method of building an application, the method comprising:

providing a programming language compatible with an application environment, the language used for developing the application;

identifying objects of the application environment;

searching source code of the application environment for one or more of the objects;

generating a property for each of the one or more objects that are found; and

accessing the one or more objects that have the associated property.

29. The method of claim 28, further comprising compiling the one or more objects into a class.

30. The method of claim 28, further comprising grouping the one or more objects into class with a namespace.

31. A system that facilitates building of an application, comprising:

means for identifying an object of an application development environment;

means for searching source code of the environment for one or more of the objects;

means for generating a property for each of the one or more objects that are found;

means for returning the one or more objects that have the associated property;

means for compiling the one or more objects into a class; and

means for associating the class with a namespace.

32. The system of claim 31, the means for compiling fetches source files from a runtime library.

33. The system of claim 31, further comprising means for injecting source code into a user project based on a library that was referenced.

34. The system of claim 31, the one or more objects are top level objects that have a class declaration associated therewith.

35. The system of claim 31, the property is part of source code that is embedded in a runtime dynamic linked library as a resource.

36. The system of claim 35, the means for compiling automatically references the library, and checks for the presence of the resource for all compilations.

37. The system of claim 35, the means for compiling adds contents of the resource as a hidden source file buffer to a project defined within the environment.

38. The system of claim 31, the means for compiling uses attribute arguments to collect class members of a group of the one or more objects to generate underlying code of the group.

39. The system of claim 31, further comprising means for employing a number of top-level classes according to the application being developed.