Enumerate types of a specific MEF Export

Question

Thank you for reading this post, I am attempting to create a DSL model that will allow the application developer the ability to choose from a list of known MEF Export Types for a given interface from any Assembly or project item within their solution.

I would like to know how at design time and from within my model, how to enumerate all MEF Exported types within the entire solution (source files/assemblies) that support a specific Interface and from which create a collection of the associated Export Names from these MEF Exports all within  my DSL Model.

The end result I am attempting to achieve is that I would have a property on a specific Domain Class that contains a prepopulated list of MEF Export Names for a specific Interface so that a user would choose from this list to identify that a particular Domain Class is referenced to a particular MEF Export Type by its name which will be information that is used by my runtime framework to compose that named Export type at runtime.

So for example I have an Interface called ISomeInterfaceType and within my solution I have two classes defined that support the ISomeInterfaceType interface; one with a MEF Export name of “MyType1” the other with a MEF Export Name of “MyType2”.   As the application developer is modeling with my DSL model, and adds a Domain Class that implements this functionality it would contain a dropdown list property they could set which would in this scenario contain two list items,  “MyType1”, “MyType2”. 

If possible, I would also like to understand how I can have the model instance automatically detect and update any Domain Classes where the respective Export Name is changed/deleted within the solution and have the changes applied to any respective DSL model instance (if possible). If not possible please let me know.

I am new to Visual Studio Integration but do understand the principals of DSL generation. Please let me know if you require addtional information.

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Johnny Larue

Answer 1

This is not a question about MEF... as I could be looking say a file that has a specific interface...

Forget about the fact that I am looking for MEF Export names within a given source file or assembly ...

If I re-worded this to ... I would like to dynamically derived some meta data from a Visual Studio solution (say ... a list of classes that contain a specific interface) and to add these to a DropDown that an application developer can choose from. 

So ... I am really interested in how to enumerate a bunch of types within a VS project and to learn how and where to incorporate such logic into a DSL model dynamically as Domain properties ...

I am sorry that you do not see the overarching question I have possed ... its nothing to do with MEF. 

Please let me know where this question best sits if not within the VS Visuailization & Modeling SDK forum.

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Johnny Larue

Answer 2

So far I have not received a ton of community support (possibly due to the fact that a moderator of the Extensibility forum moved this to MEF which it's clearly not a MEF issue) ... that said, for those who may have interest in helping or would like more insight into my progress, please check out this posting ...

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/vsx/thread/eb555ad9-1252-4f36-bd32-5296de48224f

... although not quite 100% (yet) I am getting pretty close to achieving what it is that I was trying to achieve.

Cheers

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Johnny Larue