Wednesday, May 07, 2008

System.Addin Overview and Usage CodeProject - More help for the System.Addin learning curve

CodeProject - AddIn Enabled Applications

"This article is all about using the .NET 3.5 System.Addin namespace. This article owes much to the fabulous WPF book by Mathew McDonald (Who is an uber genius in my opinion).
What this article is attempting to demomstrate is fairly simple actually.

There is 1 AddIn contract (INumberProcessorContract implementing IContract) that defines how all addins should do. There is also another Contract that specifies how the AddIn should communicate back to the Host application. This Contract is called IHostObjectContract which again implement IContract.

There is a pipeline to support the AddIn model, and finally there is a host application that will host the AddIns. In essence that is all this article is about.

Before I start diving into the details its probably worth mentioning what the AddIn(s) provided by the demo application actually do. ..."

This CodeProject provides a very nice overview of System.Addin as well as using it via a simple sample application.

Due to it's power, level of abstraction and versioning support, the using System.Addin is complicated and there's a something of a learning curve. This article, along with the below screencasts, should help you a good bit with this curve...

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Managed Addin Framework (MAF) Screencast Follow-up - If thinking about adding Addin/Plugin support to your .Net application then you need to watch these two screencasts by Daniel Moth...
.Net 3.5 Managed Addin Framework Screencasts by Daniel Moth
Managed Extensibility and Add-In Framework CodePlex Project - Meet .Net 3.5 System.Addin and Friends
Managed Addin Framework (MAF)

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