.Net 4: Easy way to dynamically create List<Tuple<...>> results

Question

For a remoting scenario, the result would be very good to receive as an array or list of Tuple objects (among benefits being strong typing).

Example: dynamically convert SELECT Name, Age FROM Table => List<Tuple<string,int>>

Question: are there any samples out there that, given an arbitrary table of data (like SQL resultset or CSV file), with types of each column known only at runtime, to generate code that would dynamically create a strongly-typed List<Tuple<...>> object. Code should be dynamically generated, otherwise it would be extremely slow.

Answer 1

Edit: I changed the code to use the Tuple constructor instead of Tuple.Create. It currently works only for up to 8 values, but to add the 'Tuple stacking' should be trivial.

---

This is a little bit tricky and implementation is kind of dependent on the datasource. To give an impression, I created a solution using a list of anonymous types as a source.

As Elion said, we need to dynamically create an expression tree to call it afterward. The basic technique we employ is called projection.

We have to get, at runtime the type information and create a ConstructorInfor of the Tuple(...) constructor according to the properties count. This is dynamic (although needs to be the same per record) per each call.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Linq.Expressions;

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {

        var list = new[]
                       {
                           //new {Name = "ABC", Id = 1},
                           //new {Name = "Xyz", Id = 2}
                           new {Name = "ABC", Id = 1, Foo = 123.22},
                           new {Name = "Xyz", Id = 2, Foo = 444.11}
                       };

        var resultList = DynamicNewTyple(list);

        foreach (var item in resultList)
        {
            Console.WriteLine( item.ToString() );
        }

        Console.ReadLine();

    }

    static IQueryable DynamicNewTyple<T>(IEnumerable<T> list)
    {
        // This is basically: list.Select(x=> new Tuple<string, int, ...>(x.Name, x.Id, ...);
        Expression selector = GetTupleNewExpression<T>();

        var expressionType = selector.GetType();
        var funcType = expressionType.GetGenericArguments()[0]; // == Func< <>AnonType..., Tuple<String, int>>
        var funcTypegenericArguments = funcType.GetGenericArguments();

        var inputType = funcTypegenericArguments[0];  // == <>AnonType...
        var resultType = funcTypegenericArguments[1]; // == Tuple<String, int>

        var selects = typeof (Queryable).GetMethods()
            .AsQueryable()
            .Where(x => x.Name == "Select"
            );

        // This is hacky, we just hope the first method is correct, 
        // we should explicitly search the correct one
        var genSelectMi = selects.First(); 
        var selectMi = genSelectMi.MakeGenericMethod(new[] {inputType, resultType}); 

        var result = selectMi.Invoke(null, new object[] {list.AsQueryable(), selector});
        return (IQueryable) result;

    }

    static Expression GetTupleNewExpression<T>()
    {
        Type paramType = typeof (T);
        string tupleTyneName = typeof (Tuple).AssemblyQualifiedName;
        int propertiesCount = paramType.GetProperties().Length;

        if ( propertiesCount > 8 )
        {
            throw new ApplicationException(
                "Currently only Tuples of up to 8 entries are alowed. You could change this code to allow stacking of Tuples!");
        }

        // So far we have the non generic Tuple type. 
        // Now we need to create select the correct geneeric of Tuple.
        // There might be a cleaner way ... you could get all types with the name 'Tuple' and 
        // select the one with the correct number of arguments ... that exercise is left to you!
        // We employ the way of getting the AssemblyQualifiedTypeName and add the genric information 
        tupleTyneName = tupleTyneName.Replace("Tuple,", "Tuple`" + propertiesCount + ",");
        var genericTupleType = Type.GetType(tupleTyneName);

        var argument = Expression.Parameter(paramType, "x");

        var parmList = new List<Expression>();
        List<Type> tupleTypes = new List<Type>();

        //we add all the properties to the tuples, this only will work for up to 8 properties (in C#4)
        // We probably should use our own implementation.
        // We could use a dictionary as well, but then we would need to rewrite this function 
        // more or less completly as we would need to call the 'Add' function of a dictionary.
        foreach (var param in paramType.GetProperties())
        {
            parmList.Add(Expression.Property(argument, param));
            tupleTypes.Add(param.PropertyType);
        }

        // Create a type of the discovered tuples
        var tupleType = genericTupleType.MakeGenericType(tupleTypes.ToArray());

        var tuplConstructor =
            tupleType.GetConstructors().First();

        var res =
            Expression.Lambda(
                Expression.New(tuplConstructor, parmList.ToArray()),
                argument);

        return res;
    }
}

If you want to use a DataReader or some CVS input, you would need to rewrite the function GetTupleNewExpression.

I cant speak about the performance, although it should not be much slower as a native LINQ implementation as the generation of the LINQ expression only happens once per call. If its too slow you could go down the road of generating code (and keep it stored in a file) for example using Mono.Cecil.

I couldn't test this in C# 4.0 yet and but it should work. If you want to try it in C# 3.5 you need the following code as well:

public static class Tuple
{

    public static Tuple<T1, T2> Create<T1, T2>(T1 item1, T2 item2)
    {
        return new Tuple<T1, T2>(item1, item2);
    }

    public static Tuple<T1, T2, T3> Create<T1, T2, T3>(T1 item1, T2 item2, T3 item3)
    {
        return new Tuple<T1, T2, T3>(item1, item2, item3);
    }
}

public class Tuple<T1, T2>
{

    public Tuple(T1 item1, T2 item2)
    {
        Item1 = item1;
        Item2 = item2;
    }

    public T1 Item1 { get; set;}
    public T2 Item2 { get; set;}

    public override string ToString()
    {
        return string.Format("Item1: {0}, Item2: {1}", Item1, Item2);
    }

}

public class Tuple<T1, T2, T3> : Tuple<T1, T2>
{
    public T3 Item3 { get; set; }

    public Tuple(T1 item1, T2 item2, T3 item3) : base(item1, item2)
    {
        Item3 = item3;
    }

    public override string ToString()
    {
        return string.Format(base.ToString() + ", Item3: {0}", Item3);
    }
}