Typespace

This is a tiny trick to allow nested classes in C# to be used in place of strings when specifying IDs in HTML. This then makes it possible/easier to refactor, find usages, and generally lean on code tooling to get consistent client-side IDs.

For example, given this (comprised of nested classes):

Example.Page.SubSection.Row.Header // Yes, it's excessive. Maybe.

This is implicitly converted to a string as:

"example-page-subsection-row-header"

The C# code defining the above example nested class heirarchy looks like this:

(This becomes more economical when the number of properties - IDs per page - increases)

public static class Example
{
   private static string? test;
   public static string Test => test ??= Typespace.Name;

   public static class Page
   {
      public static class SubSection
      {
         public static class Row
         {
            private static string? header;
            public static string Header => header ??= Typespace.Name;
         }
      }
   }
}

Usage pattern

To get this to generate the correct name, a specific pattern needs to be used as seen in the Example above.

Each string property has to be an expression bodied property.

This, when called, will then execute in the context of the property getter rather than the Typespace constructor, so we can grab the property name from the callstack metadata.

Caching fields

The null coalescing assignment operator seen in the Example helps to speed things up immensely. Typespace is fast, but why do the same work more than once?

But is it quick enough?

This is a primary concern - if this is going to be used in the render pipeline, it needs to be fast and efficient.

// * Detailed results *
Benchmarks.RunTheThing: DefaultJob
Runtime = .NET 6.0.8 (6.0.822.36306), X64 RyuJIT; GC = Concurrent Workstation
Mean = 1.065 ns, StdErr = 0.001 ns (0.14%), N = 15, StdDev = 0.006 ns
Min = 1.058 ns, Q1 = 1.060 ns, Median = 1.065 ns, Q3 = 1.071 ns, Max = 1.074 ns
IQR = 0.011 ns, LowerFence = 1.044 ns, UpperFence = 1.087 ns
ConfidenceInterval = [1.059 ns; 1.071 ns] (CI 99.9%), Margin = 0.006 ns (0.57% of Mean)
Skewness = 0.21, Kurtosis = 1.37, MValue = 2
-------------------- Histogram --------------------
[1.055 ns ; 1.077 ns) | @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
---------------------------------------------------

// * Summary *

BenchmarkDotNet=v0.13.1, OS=Windows 10.0.22000
Intel Core i9-9900K CPU 3.60GHz (Coffee Lake), 1 CPU, 16 logical and 8 physical cores
.NET SDK=6.0.400
  [Host]     : .NET 6.0.8 (6.0.822.36306), X64 RyuJIT
  DefaultJob : .NET 6.0.8 (6.0.822.36306), X64 RyuJIT


|      Method |     Mean |     Error |    StdDev | Rank | Allocated |
|------------ |---------:|----------:|----------:|-----:|----------:|
| RunTheThing | 1.065 ns | 0.0061 ns | 0.0057 ns |    1 |         - |

// * Legends *
  Mean      : Arithmetic mean of all measurements
  Error     : Half of 99.9% confidence interval
  StdDev    : Standard deviation of all measurements
  Rank      : Relative position of current benchmark mean among all benchmarks (Arabic style)
  Allocated : Allocated memory per single operation (managed only, inclusive, 1KB = 1024B)
  1 ns      : 1 Nanosecond (0.000000001 sec)