Another .NET Blog

In this article, I'll show yet another use of PostSharp, this time focusing on the ConfigurationSection class. If you look in the MSDN at the articles which explain how to use the ConfigurationSection, you may have noticed that the code you need to write is repetitive, tedious, and error-prone:

public class PageAppearanceSection : ConfigurationSection
{
	[ConfigurationProperty("remoteOnly", DefaultValue = "false", IsRequired = false)]
	public Boolean RemoteOnly
	{
		get { return (Boolean)this["remoteOnly"]; }
		set	{ this["remoteOnly"] = value; }
	}

	[ConfigurationProperty("font")]
	public FontElement Font
	{
		get	{ return (FontElement)this["font"]; }
		set	{ this["font"] = value; }
	}

	[ConfigurationProperty("color")]
	public ColorElement Color
	{
		get	{ return (ColorElement)this["color"]; }
		set	{ this["color"] = value; }
	}
}

As you can see, you have to put the ConfigurationPropertyAttribute on top of each property, and to make calls to an indexer to the Get and Set methods of the properties, using the same name you used in the attribute.

Doesn't this repetition look like to be a good candidate for an aspect?