My newest Pluralsight course on Fody was just released.

Fody is a tool that frees us up from having to write repetitive boilerplate code. For example we can automate IDisposable implementation or automatically add Equals(), GetHashCode() and equality operators.

Fody is not one tool, but a collection of individual “addins” around the core Fody, with the core GitHub members: Simon Cropp, Rafał Jasica, and Cameron MacFarland.

Automatically Implementing Equality

As an example of what’s possible with Fody, we can auto-implement equality.

So first off we install the Equals Fody addin via NuGet:

PM> Install-Package Equals.Fody

Now we can add the [Equals] attribute to indicate that we want to auto-implement equality.

We can opt-out specific properties so they won’t be considered during equality by applying the [IgnoreDuringEquals] attribute.

We can also provide custom equality logic by creating a method and decorating it with the [CustomEqualsInternal] attribute. So for example if either altitude is –1 then consider altitudes equal.

The following code shows these attributes in action:

[Equals]
public class Location
{
    [IgnoreDuringEquals] 
    public int Altitude { get; set; }
    
    public int Lat { get; set; }
    public int Long { get; set; }

    [CustomEqualsInternal]
    private bool CustomEqualsLogic(Location other)
    {
        // this method is evaluated if the other auto-equal properties are equal

        if (this.Altitude == other.Altitude)
        {
            return true;
        }

        if (this.Altitude == -1 || other.Altitude == -1)
        {
            return true;
        }

        return false;
    } 
}

For a list of available addins or to contribute (or even create your own addin) check out the GitHub project site.

To learn more about how Fody works, how to use some of the available addins, and how to create your own check out my Pluralsight course.

You can start watching with a Pluralsight free trial.

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