Specimen

Basic contract and abstract implementation of the specification pattern.

Installation

Specimen can be installed using the NuGet command line or the NuGet Package Manager in Visual Studio.

PM> Install-Package Specimen

Example

First, you will need to add the following using statement:

using Specimen;

Creating specification classes

To create your own specification classes, there are 2 options:

• Implement the ISpecification<T> interface:

public class PositiveIntegerSpecification : ISpecification<int> 
{
    public Expression<Func<int, bool>> Predicate => value => value > 0;
    
    public bool IsSatisfiedBy(int value)
    {
        // Ideally the compiled expression should be cached
        var compiled = this.Predicate.Compile();
        return compiled(value);
    }
}

public class GreaterThanSpecification : ISpecification<int> 
{
    private readonly int threshold int;
    
    public LargerThanSpecification(int threshold)
    {
        this.threshold = threshold;
    }

    public Expression<Func<int, bool>> Predicate => value => value > this.threshold;
    
    public bool IsSatisfiedBy(int value)
    {
        // Ideally the compiled expression should be cached
        var compiled = this.Predicate.Compile();
        return compiled(value);
    }
}

public class MultipleOfSpecification : ISpecification<int> 
{
    private readonly int baseNumber int;
    
    public MultipleOfSpecification(int baseNumber)
    {
        this.baseNumber = baseNumber;
    }

    public Expression<Func<int, bool>> Predicate => value => value % this.baseNumber == 0;
    
    public bool IsSatisfiedBy(int value)
    {
        // Ideally the compiled expression should be cached
        var compiled = this.Predicate.Compile();
        return compiled(value);
    }
}

• Extend the SpecificationBase<T> abstract class:

public class PositiveIntegerSpecification : SpecificationBase<int> 
{
    public override Expression<Func<int, bool>> Predicate => value => value > 0;
}

public class GreaterThanSpecification : SpecificationBase<int> 
{
    private readonly int threshold int;
    
    public LargerThanSpecification(int threshold)
    {
        this.threshold = threshold;
    }

    public override Expression<Func<int, bool>> Predicate => value => value > this.threshold;
}

public class MultipleOfSpecification : ISpecification<int> 
{
    private readonly int baseNumber int;
    
    public MultipleOfSpecification(int baseNumber)
    {
        this.baseNumber = baseNumber;
    }

    public override Expression<Func<int, bool>> Predicate => value => value % this.baseNumber == 0;
}

The SpecificationBase<T> class already implements the ISpecification<T>#IsSatisfiedBy method in a cache-aware manner.

Logical operators

Logical operations like negation, conjunction (AND) and disjunction (OR) can be applied on ISpecification<T> instances as follows:

Negation

var positive = new PositiveIntegerSpecification();

var negativeOrZero = positive.Negate();

Assert(negativeOrZero.IsSatisfiedBy(-10));
Assert(negativeOrZero.IsSatisfiedBy(-5));
Assert(negativeOrZero.IsSatisfiedBy(0));
Assert(negativeOrZero.IsSatisfiedBy(5)); // Raises error

Conjunction

var positive = new PositiveIntegerSpecification();
var multipleOfTwo = new MultipleOfSpecification(2);
var largerThanFive = new GreaterThanSpecification(5);

var positiveMultipleOfTwoLargerThanFive = positive.And(multipleOfTwo, largerThanFive);

Assert(positiveMultipleOfTwoLargerThanFive.IsSatisfiedBy(-10)); // Raises error
Assert(positiveMultipleOfTwoLargerThanFive.IsSatisfiedBy(0)); // Raises error
Assert(positiveMultipleOfTwoLargerThanFive.IsSatisfiedBy(15)); // Raises error
Assert(positiveMultipleOfTwoLargerThanFive.IsSatisfiedBy(20));
Assert(positiveMultipleOfTwoLargerThanFive.IsSatisfiedBy(25)); // Raises error

Disjunction

var positive = new PositiveIntegerSpecification();
var multipleOfTwo = new MultipleOfSpecification(2);
var largerThanFive = new GreaterThanSpecification(5);

var positiveMultipleOfTwoLargerThanFive = positive.Or(multipleOfTwo, largerThanFive);

Assert(positiveMultipleOfTwoLargerThanFive.IsSatisfiedBy(-10)); // Raises error
Assert(positiveMultipleOfTwoLargerThanFive.IsSatisfiedBy(0)); // Raises error
Assert(positiveMultipleOfTwoLargerThanFive.IsSatisfiedBy(15));
Assert(positiveMultipleOfTwoLargerThanFive.IsSatisfiedBy(20));
Assert(positiveMultipleOfTwoLargerThanFive.IsSatisfiedBy(25));

Working with LINQ

Support for LINQ expressions/functions is provided by the library, allowing to use ISpecification<T> instances as inpuf of Where invocations:

var source = new []{-10, 5, 0, -5, 20 };
var positive = new PositiveIntegerSpecification();

var filtered = source.Where(positive); // Yields [5, 20]

Assert(positiveMultipleOfTwoLargerThanFive.Count() == 2);

Other projects

Check out some of my other C# projects:

• DotNetFunctional.Maybe: An Option type monad for C# with LINQ support and rich fluent syntax.
• DotNetFunctional.Try: The Try monad (Error/Exceptional monad) for C# with LINQ support and rich fluent syntax.