[ASPeKT] Oriented Programming

I recently had the pleasure of doing a podcast, with Matthew D. Groves, of Cross Cutting Concerns blog. He essentially “wrote the book”, so to speak, on Aspect Oriented Programming. It’s called AOP in .NET, without pumping his tires too much, I will say that his book is pretty great. I just recently finished reading it, and came to the conclusion that Matthew and I are on the same page regarding a lot of Software Development Fundamentals. Specifically, his take on AOP (Aspect Oriented Programming) and the benefits of it. The ability with AOP to factor out common code that crosses all areas of your code base, and encapsulate it so that you have a single point of change, is a very powerful concept. He illustrates concepts like these, and many others in his book. It also gives a nice overview into the different tools available in the AOP world. Even after writing my own AOP library, I was still able to learn a lot from this book. If you’re interested in AOP or Software Development in general, you should definitely check it out.

To follow up with Matthew’s Podcast, featuring me and the library I created called [ASPeKT] (no relation to ASP, I just liked the way it looked). I wanted to write a post that overviews AOP, and some of the benefits of this powerful programming paradigm. I want to talk about [ASPeKT], the benefits and costs of using a simple AOP library. Then detail some of the challenges I faced as I wrote it, as I work to make it more known, and as I continue to make it better.

Why Aspect Oriented Programming?

AOP is a little known, yet very widely used programming paradigm. How can it be little known, yet very widely used, you ask? Mostly because it’s built into a lot of .NET libraries and frameworks that people use every day, but they just don’t know they’re actually using AOP concepts. Interestingly enough, .NET ASP MVC Authentication, uses AOP patterns. Most people just go about programming and using the Authenticate attribute, without knowing they’re actually hoisting a cross-cutting concern up with a more declarative (cleaner) approach, and letting the framework deal with it.  For me, as a skeptic of AOP at the beginning, it was a huge eye opener to realize that these concepts are actually applied all over in the .NET world. We just don’t realize it. This also brings to light, the power of being able to spot cross-cutting concerns, and be able to encapsulate them, using a library like [ASPeKT]. Thus, removing the need for clunky boilerplate code, and copy-pasta patterns that live in documentation, or worse yet only the minds of your more senior developers.

What is Aspect Oriented Programming, really?

In order to really understand what AOP is, we have to first understand what a “cross-cutting concern” (CCC) is. A CCC is, is the fundamental problem AOP looks to solve. These CCCs typically tend to be the non-functional requirements of your application. They’re code, that spreads across your code base, but they’re not easily factored into their own units. The canonical CCC is logging or auditing. Your application can function, business wise, without it. Yet, if you were to implement the need for “logging” across your application, you would end up with logging code, that pollutes your actual business logic. Things like logging the entry and exit of functions. You end up with code like this.

class Foo 
{
    public void Bar() 
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Entered Bar");
        Console.WriteLine("Pour a drink.");
        Console.WriteLine("Exiting Bar");
    }
};

You can see how this can get tedious, you end up having ‘rules’ or ‘patterns’ that define how and what you log. “This is how we log entry into a function, with it’s parameters. ‘Entering Function – Function. The format lives in a document, stored in SharePoint.” Now imagine when one day that needs to change, and you’re forced to update the 43 million different log lines across your application. Welcome to Hell. Talk about why they call these things ‘concerns’.

Logging isn’t the only concern that spreads and tangles across your code. Things like Authorization, what I call function ‘contracts’ or defensive programming, threading, and many other patterns. These patterns are often overlooked as cross-cutting and don’t always speak to boilerplate, but with a keen eye and some creativity can be teased out into their own re-usable aspects.

Using an AOP tool, allows you to hoist this boilerplate code into its own encapsulated class, where it belongs. Then it allows you to place it declaratively, which makes the code read more explicitly. But also, removes the clutter from the actual business logic of the function. These tools make it so you don’t have to weed through the logging, defensive programming, authorization, etc. Just to find out what the actual intention of the function is. You’ll end up writing code more akin to this.

class LoggedAttribute : Aspect 
{
    public override void OnEntry(MethodArgs args)
    {
        Console.WriteLine($"Entering {args.MethodName}");
    }
    public override void OnExit(MethodArgs args)
    {
        Console.WriteLine($"Exiting {args.MethodName}");
    }
};

class Foo
{
     [Logged]
     public void Bar()
     {
          Console.WriteLine("Pour a drink.");
     }
};

This code effectively functions the same as above. However,  it is substantially cleaner, and the biggest benefit is the ease of change. Now, if I’ve used the LoggedAttribute across my code base and I want to make a change. I only need to make the change in one spot, as opposed to everywhere we copied and pasted the logging lines. AOP allows you to offload the tedious boilerplate code, on the machine. Who is much, much, much faster at typing than humans. The machine also, never makes a typo.

Now that you know what a cross-cutting concern is, I can explain AOP. Effectively AOP is a tool, set of tools, or a paradigm to deal with cross-cutting concerns. In order to prescribe to an AOP model, you need the following 3 things.

1. A Join Point – this is the point at which our AOP model allows us to interject code. In the case of [ASPeKT], the join-points are method boundaries. i.e. Entering / Exiting of a function. Other libraries like Castle DynamicProxy, and PostSharp allow for actual method interception, so you can say the join-point is this instead of that. This can be useful for things like error handling, retry logic, or threading models.
2. A Point Cut – this is the way in which you specify, where you want to apply code to the Join Points. Think of this as a sentence describing where you want the code to run. I know my Join Point is Entry/Exit of function. My Point Cut could be “every function that starts with My”, or simply, “every function in the application”. [ASPeKT] uses attribute placement as the Point Cut definition. So where you place the attribute, determines how it will apply the code to the Join Points.
3. Advice – essentially, the code you want to run at the Join Points. So for [ASPeKT], this is the code you write in OnEntry / OnExit / OnException.

Given these three things, you can start to encapsulate the CCC, which then allows you to start applying that code to other code. You don’t need to copy-pasta, you don’t need to find the document that says how to do logging or auditing. You just apply logging, you apply auditing. It becomes very powerful, because these concerns are now tools in your development toolkit. They’re easily tweaked, they’re modifiable without the daunting overhead of find and replace in every file in the solution. Now, they make sense.

So hopefully now you see the benefit of AOP, and can maybe start to see places where AOP could benefit your projects or workplace. I’ll be honest, it’s not always the easiest sell. So if you’re interested and you want more information, please feel free to reach out. I love talking about these kinds of things.

[ASPeKT] In a Nutshell

My first real intriguing look at AOP, was as I was reading the book Adaptive Code via C# — Gary Maclean Hall. He gave a brief introduction into AOP, mostly to describe its use with logging. Which at the time, I laughed and thought, ‘there’s really no other use than logging’. Later on in the book, he describes a pattern to reduce dependencies on lower layer APIs, by translating API level exceptions into higher level exceptions. This is so higher level components can make decisions based on the exceptions, without being explicitly tied to the lower level library. Consider the use of a library that is encapsulating sending data to a webserver for storage. Something like Office 365 Drive.

You might have code like this.

// MyStorage.dll - our internal wrappers, depends on OfficeWebDrive.dll
interface IStorage 
{
      public void Store(string name, Stream stream);
}


class OfficeDrive : IStorage
{
    public void Store(string name, Stream stream)
    {
         // use OfficeWebDrive.dll third party library
         // make requests to store data,
         // can throw "OfficeWebDrive.StorageFullException"
    }
};

// Application.exe - depends on MyStorage.dll, 
// but should have no dependency on OfficeWebDrive.dll

class Book 
{
    public void AddText(string text)
    {
        // Code to append text.
    }

    public void Save() 
    {
        storage_.Store(Title, Data);
    }
   
    Stream Data { get; }
    string Title { get; }
};

class Application 
{
    public void SomethingHere()
    {
         try
         {
             Book book = new Book("AOP in .NET");
             book.AddText("Lorem Ipsum");
             book.Save();
         }
         catch(OfficeWebDrive.StorageFullException e)
         {
               // Deal with the StorageFullException
         }
    }
};

As you can see, we’ve done our best to program to an interface, using the IStorage interface. Our application should have no dependencies on the actual underlying storage libraries. Except that because we need to deal with the StorageFullException, we need to now explicitly make a dependency between our application and the lower level third party API.

The sentiment then, from Adaptive code, is to wrap the 3rd party library calls, and translate the exception. Like so.

class OfficeDrive : IStorage
{
    public void Store(string name, Stream stream)
    {
        try 
        {
            // use OfficeWebDrive.dll third party library
            // make requests to store data,
            // can throw "OfficeWebDrive.StorageFullException"
        }
        catch(OfficeWebDrive.StorageFullException e)
        {
             // translate the error
             throw new MyStorage.StorageFullException(e.Message);
        }
    }
};

Now, the higher level code can make the same decisions about what to do when the storage is full, but no dependencies on the low level libraries. If we wanted, we could completely change the underlying storage mechanism. Without needing the Application to rebuild.

‘Hey Gary, this is a great spot for AOP’ I thought being clever.

class OfficeDrive : IStorage
{
    [TranslateException(typeof(OfficeWebDrive.StorageFullException), 
     typeof(MyStorage.StorageFullException))]
    public void Store(string name, Stream stream)
    {
        // use OfficeWebDrive.dll third party library
        // make requests to store data,
        // can throw "OfficeWebDrive.StorageFullException"
    }
};

Now, we let the AOP framework handle the boilerplate try/catch code. This also really calls out what is happening, and why.

Where does [ASPeKT] come in?

Well — after I thought about this, I wanted to build it. I guess I could’ve easily used the PostSharp Express version and whipped it out really quickly. But that’s not me. If I’m going to understand something, I’m going to understand it. So I set off to write a small AOP library, where I could solve this problem. It was a rather simple concept, or so I thought.

I didn’t even really know what an AOP library did. That’s where the research started, “open source AOP libraries”, “how does PostSharp work”, etc, etc. Just some of the multitude of search terms I used while I did research into how to build an AOP library.

I had the concept of what I wanted. I wanted something that I could declare an attribute, that would translate an exception. Easy.

Let’s go down the rabbit hole.

At it’s core, AOP is actually allowing a machine to write code for you. You’ve moved the copy and paste from your fingers Ctrl+C / Ctrl-V to the machines apt fingers. Allowing the computer to ‘weave’ the code for you.  You define the boilerplate as an aspect, and you let the machine do the work for you, because that’s what they’re good at (no offense computer).

You’ve got three options for when this can happen.

1. In the source code, before you compile. Using some type of marked up code in your source, you could run a pre-compiler that will insert code snippets into the source. Before the compiler does it’s work.
2. After the compiler — though not impossible on native assemblies. It is far easier on languages like C# and Java, which use an intermediate language, between source code and assembly. We can post-process the compiled intermediate language (IL), to apply the code we want.
3. At runtime. Well this has somewhat of an over-watch pattern, where something is watching the calls as they run through and interpreting whether or not to run our aspects.

Now — knowing this, which one do you choose? My thought process was as follows.

1. Option 1: Modify the source — I don’t want to write a compiler. Well, I do, but not for this. So that was off the table, at least for now. You also have dependency on language syntax, not that I would expect much of C# syntax to change, but still.
2. Option 3: At runtime – I don’t want this. I come from a native background, specifically C++. I don’t want to pay overhead where I don’t have to. I didn’t want to have something that is monitoring functions as they run, or building code at runtime. Just wasn’t what I wanted.

So that left option 2, what exactly is that? How does it even work?  I need something that will run, after the binary compiles, and modify it to add in the CCC code.

Let’s go deeper…

To understand post compile weaving, we must first understand how the .NET runtime operates, at a high level. The .NET Runtime is what’s called a “virtual machine”. The draw towards these “virtual machines”, was started with JAVA created by Sun Microsystems. The large benefit to JAVA, was that it was a compile once, run anywhere language. This was hugely powerful, when you consider the alternative of compiling for every architecture, as is the case with C and C++.  The virtual machine, allows you to compile to a well known set of instructions (IL), which then will output machine specific instructions for the hardware when run through the virtual machine. This way, you only need to write a virtual machine for the hardware, and you open yourself up to all the applications available for that runtime. This is one of the reasons JAVA became so hugely popular, because you could write a JVM for your VCR and all of a sudden pow smart VCR, with lots of apps available.

Obviously, Microsoft saw the benefit and flexibility in this and took advantage, so they started shipping JAVA in Visual Studio. They had their own JVM, and JAVA compiler as well. They also saw an advantage to extend this language, for the Windows operating system. Enter J++, Microsoft’s implementation of Java with extensions for the Windows OS. With J++, came a lawsuit from Sun Microsystems. Microsoft had a non-compliant JVM and they were violating the terms of the license agreement (who reads those things anyways?). Wah. Wah. So what does Microsoft do? They do what any billion dollar software development company would do. They eat the lawsuit, and take J++ and turn into what we now know as C#.  They also see the immense power in this .NET Runtime, and see that they can compile a whole multitude of different languages into IL. With the release of .NET Runtime 1.0, there was support for 26 languages (I think). To be completely honest, I’m glad that Sun sued Microsoft, because I hate JAVA as a language, and I love C#. So it was a win, in my opinion.

Anyways — aside from that little lesson in history, we can understand how ‘weaving’ works in a .NET language. Like I said, C# is a language that compiles to IL, aka CIL or MSIL. An intermediate language, is on the fence. Between a language that is “compiled” to actual assembly (hardware instructions). And an interpreted language like JS, that is completely interpreted at runtime. The C# compiler, takes the C# language and outputs a binary form of instructions that complies to the .NET runtime standard. These instructions are then interpreted, and compiled Just-In-Time to output hardware instructions. This means, that after we compile to IL, and before running, we can insert some extra IL instructions, then voila.

How do you weave IL?

Weaving IL is actually pretty straight forward, if you know what you’re doing. Which I didn’t. Ha. At first, I kind of flew by the seat of my pants. I knew I needed to re-write the IL, and I had heard about tools like Roslyn and Mono.Cecil. Roslyn being a compiler, wasn’t exactly what I wanted. I needed at tool to modify the IL, which is exactly what Mono.Cecil is. It not only uses the built in Reflection.Emit, but also adds a lot of ease to manipulating the IL.

The task at hand for me, was to open the binary, find the spot that I had declared my “TranslateExcepton” and then insert the instructions for that, into the method where I declared.  I just decided to make it generic, to work with any Aspects I created. I will spare the gory details, but the high-level was as follows.

1. Open the compiled .NET assembly
2. Find functions decorated with Aspekt.Aspects
3. Write IL to instantiate the Aspect, and make the entry call
4. Write IL to wrap the existing code in a try/catch
5. Execute the existing code
6. Write IL to make the exit call

I could write an entire post on weaving IL, but not today. If you’re interested in that, please drop me a line and let me know. I can describe, in detail, all the pain I felt while I was learning how to do this.

Once, I had figured out how to do this. I had an executable that I could run against my compiled .NET binaries, which would weave aspect code, where I place attributes. Then all I needed to do was write the aspect, to translate the exception. You can actually find this aspect in the [ASPeKT] code. Kind of like an ode to the beginning, for me.

What came next?

Now that I had the start of this framework. I thought to myself, that I had actually built something that could be useful. “People might actually want to use this”. I had also always wanted to author an open source library. So I started reaching out on Reddit, and making the foundation more easily accessible for people to use. I made the core more stable. Then I started writing new features, like [ASPeKT] Contracts. It was a surprising journey. In the past I had written many throw away libraries, and many small tools that have never seen the light of day. Always just to prove to myself, well, that I could. There was just something to this one, it was a niche library and I thought there was something to it.

I guess the reality is that I’m still in the middle of this journey, with [ASPeKT] core having 588 downloads, and Contracts having slightly less at 416. I’m still working towards my goal of 1000 downloads for each. Realistically, a project that uses [ASPeKT] could be the spark that it needs to ignite. Until then though, I will just keep plugging away and making it cooler and easier to use.

Why should you use [ASPeKT]?

Well — if you’re at all curious in the inner workings of an AOP library, the code is public on my GitHub or you can easily get the package on NuGet. The second, is maybe you have a project that could benefit from AOP? [ASPeKT] is pretty lightweight, and easy to get started with. Though, if you’re looking for a robust, feature complete, production ready library — [ASPeKT] isn’t there yet. If you’re looking for a library to contribute to, or a library that can be adapted into something production ready, then shoot me an email!

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
― Andre Gide

As always, thanks for reading. Happy Coding!

PL