Fiddling with F#

I have always had a keen interest in functional programming. While I still shy away from going completely functional for full-blown applications, I try to use the tenets of functional programming as much as I can even when writing C#. This is made much easier by the fact that C# has borrowed a lot of functional programming features as it has evolved. With each new version of the language, I find my code getting more concise and more expressive mostly owing to these features. That said, if you are looking for a functional-first experience, nothing beats a functional language. I like F# as it belongs to the .NET ecosystem but is derived from OCaml which itself is quite elegant.

There is somewhat of a barrier to entry with functional programming in terms of the learning curve. Sites like this amazing one by Scott Wlaschin make it much more appealing. Having said all that, since I am not quite at the point where I will build a full blown application with F# (plus I can’t at my day job anyway), but I have that itch to use it that needs to be scratched, I found a good use case for it, at my day job nonetheless.

Any time I need to write a quick script that does something, I default to F# these days. A good example of this is a bunch of project file cleanup scripts I needed to write that cleaned up CSPROJ files (references, Nuget packages and what not). I keep an F# program around (not even an actual compiled program - it’s a LINQPad script) that I run and add to as needed, and it works beautifully. Here are a few snippets from it that are generic enough that I can share here. Everything is in a module ProjectCleanup.

Some basic utility functions first:

let getFiles sourcePath pattern = 
    Directory.GetFiles(sourcePath, pattern, SearchOption.AllDirectories)

let excludeNones (xs: seq<'a option>) =
    xs
    |> Seq.filter (fun x -> match x with Some _ -> true | _ -> false)
    |> Seq.map (fun x -> match x with Some x' -> x' | _ -> failwith "Invalid")

let toElements (nodes:XmlNodeList) = seq {
    for node in nodes do
        yield node :?> XmlElement
}

let toMatches (ms:MatchCollection) = seq {
    for m in ms do
        yield m
}

let toMany (a:seq<seq<'a>>) = seq {
    for x in a do
        for y in x do
            yield y
}

A few helper functions to work with a bunch of files or a bunch of XML files (which CSPROJ files are).

let processFilesXml processor (files: seq<string>) =
    files
    |> Seq.iter (fun f ->
        let d = XmlDocument()
        d.Load f
        match processor d |> Seq.exists id with
        | true -> d.Save f
        | false -> () 
    )

let processFilesLines processor files =
    files
    |> Seq.iter (fun f ->
        let ls = File.ReadAllLines f
        let lcs = processor ls
        let changed = lcs |> Seq.exists (fun (c, _) -> c)
        let ls' = lcs |> Seq.map (fun (_, l) -> l) |> Seq.toArray
        match changed with true -> File.WriteAllLines(f, ls') | _ -> ()
    )

The following removes specific targets and imports that intrude into the CSPROJ when you install certain packages. They serve a purpose, but not in my case - so they have to go.

let removeBadTargetsAndImports sourcePath =
    printfn "Removing bad targets and imports from %s..." sourcePath
    getFiles sourcePath "*.csproj"
    |> processFilesXml (fun d ->        
        let importElementsToRemove =
            d.GetElementsByTagName "Import"
            |> toElements
            |> Seq.map (fun e ->
               match e.GetAttribute("Project").ToLower() with
               | p when p.Contains "nuget.targets" -> Some e
               | p when p.Contains "microsoft.bcl.build.targets" -> Some e
               | _ -> None 
            )
            |> Seq.toArray
        let targetElementsToRemove =
            d.GetElementsByTagName "Target"
            |> toElements
            |> Seq.map (fun e ->
                match e.GetAttribute("Name").ToLower() with
                | n when n.Contains "ensurebclbuildimported" -> Some e
                | n when n.Contains "ensurenugetpackagebuildimports" -> Some e
                | _ -> None
            )
            |> Seq.toArray
        Seq.concat ([|importElementsToRemove; targetElementsToRemove|])
        |> excludeNones
        |> Seq.map (fun x -> 
            x.ParentNode.RemoveChild x |> ignore
            true 
        )
    )

This one removes duplicate entries from packages.config files:

let dedupePackages sourcePath =
    printfn "De-duping packages in %s..." sourcePath
    getFiles sourcePath "packages.config"
    |> processFilesXml (fun d ->
        let elementHash = ref Map.empty            
        d.GetElementsByTagName "package"
        |> toElements
        |> Seq.map (fun e ->
            let id = e.GetAttribute "id"
            match elementHash.Value.ContainsKey id with
            | true -> Some e
            | false ->
                elementHash.Value <- elementHash.Value.Add(id, true)
                None
        )
        |> Seq.toArray
        |> excludeNones
        |> Seq.map (fun x ->
            x.ParentNode.RemoveChild x |> ignore
            true 
        )
    )

None of my projects want to target specific versions of assemblies. That is just tempting the binding redirects monster. So they have got to go.

let removeReferenceVersions sourcePath =
    printfn "Removing reference versions from %s..." sourcePath
    getFiles sourcePath "*.csproj"
    |> processFilesLines (fun ls ->
        ls
        |> Seq.map (fun l ->
            match l with
            | line when (line.Trim().StartsWith "<Reference Include=\"") && (line.Contains ",") && not (line.Contains "processorArchitecture=AMD64") ->
                let xml = line.Trim()
                let endTag = match xml.EndsWith ">" with true -> "</Reference>" | _ -> ""
                let doc = XmlDocument()
                doc.LoadXml (sprintf "%s%s" xml endTag)
                doc.DocumentElement.SetAttribute("Include", ((doc.DocumentElement.GetAttribute "Include").Split ',').[0])
                doc.DocumentElement.InnerXml <- ""
                let newXml = doc.DocumentElement.OuterXml.Replace("</Reference>", "")
                let newXml' = (match xml.EndsWith "/>" with true -> newXml.Replace(">", "/>") | _ -> newXml).Replace("//>", "/>")
                (true, line.Replace(line.Trim(), newXml'))
            | line -> (false, line)
        )
        |> Seq.toArray            
    )

Test setting files and test sections in solutions have got to go:

let deleteTestSettingFiles sourcePath =
    printfn "Deleting test setting files from %s..." sourcePath
    Seq.concat [|getFiles sourcePath "*.vsmdi"; getFiles sourcePath "*.testsettings"|]
    |> Seq.iter (File.Delete)

let removeSolutionTestSections sourcePath =
    printfn "Removing solution test sections from %s..." sourcePath
    getFiles sourcePath "*.sln"
    |> Seq.map (fun file -> (file, File.ReadAllText file))
    |> Seq.map (fun (file, content) ->
        (file, content, Regex.Match(content, "Project\\([\"\\w\\-\\{\\}]+\\) = \"Solution Items\", \"Solution Items\".+EndProjectSection\r\nEndProject", RegexOptions.Singleline).Value))
    |> Seq.filter (fun (_, _, x) -> not (String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace x))
    |> Seq.map (fun (file, content, solutionItems) -> (file, content.Replace(solutionItems, "")))
    |> Seq.iter (fun (file, content) -> File.WriteAllText(file, content))

Finally, I can call what I need to like so:

let main =
    let sp = @"C:\My_Source_Directory"
    removeBadTargetsAndImports sp
    dedupePackages sp
    removeReferenceVersions sp
    deleteTestSettingFiles sp
    removeSolutionTestSections sp
    0

For now, anyway, I find this is a nice balance and keeps me actively using both C# and F#, one for major application development, and the other one for these tools.