DGML, the new VS2010 visualization technology has capabilities to render graphs. Graphs like dependencies between classes, inheritance graphs, custom graph, you actually can visualize any relation you want. Cameron Skinner has posts about DGML and Chris Lovett has some great video’s.
[class dependencies uml2doc.codeplex.com]
Now the interesting thing is that you can analyze these graphs. In the image below you see the analyzers; Circular References – Hub – Unreferenced.
The purple classes are unreferenced which probably means dead code or entry point of the application. The kind of blue-green nodes are hub, classes which are important and heavy used, and no strongly connected classes in this solution.
Make your own analyzer.
You also can make your own analyzer. For example code coverage or naming conventions or … whatever you can imaging. In the example below I created an analyzer which marks the nodes green with the string ‘Clemens’… (code you know is great:)
Ok, maybe not that interesting analyzer, more interesting is the creation… in the /PrivateAssemblies/Providers folder there are already several analyzers available, actually the ones mentioned above.
A small analyze of this assembly tells us that all the analyzers are using the IProvider interface and the ProviderAttribute [see below]. After some more exploration you will find that the prgroesion.common assembly has a method ‘ProviderDiscovery’ which looks for classes in the provider directory.
so, making a assembly with the code below is a good start:
[Provider(Name = "ClemensAnalyzer")]
public class TestAnalyzer : IProvider
In the void Initialize(IServiceProvider serviceProvider); you have to initialize your provider, register the actions and action handler [action.ActionHandlers.Add(new ActionHandler(this.OnAnalyzeTests));]… which calls your analysis…
foreach (Node node in this._graph.VisibleNodes)
{
if (node.Label.Contains("Clemens"))
{
node[HasClemens] = true;
outputObjects.Add(node);
this.ThrowIfCancelled();
}
}
the node[HasClemens] = true; is some additional meta data you add to your diagram: private static GraphProperty HasClemens = GraphProperty.Register("HasClemens", typeof(bool), new GraphMetadata("Clemens","This one contains Clemens",null,GraphMetadataFlags.Default), typeof(TestAnalyzer));
All this and a bit more [didn’t finished the analysis completely, there is a lot more possible] result in your own analyzer…
Now, let’s start making a useful one :-)