An implementation of named string replacements, which allows formatting, parsing, and capturing properties. MessageTemplates is compatible with the Message Templates Standard. The C# implementation was extracted from Serilog.

There is also a F# implementation, see the messagetemplates-fsharp repository.

class Chair {
    public string Back { get { return "straight"; } }
    public int[] Legs { get { return new[] { 1, 2, 3, 4 }; } }
    public override string ToString() { return "a chair"; }
}

Assert.Equal(
    "I sat at Chair { Back: \"straight\", Legs: [1, 2, 3, 4] }",
    MessageTemplate.Format("I sat at {@Chair}", new Chair()));

Message templates are a superset of standard .NET format strings, so any format string acceptable to string.Format() will also be correctly processed by MessageTemplates.

• Property names are written between { and } brackets
• Brackets can be escaped by doubling them, e.g. {{ will be rendered as {
• Formats that use numeric property names, like {0} and {1} exclusively, will be matched with the Format method's parameters by treating the property names as indexes; this is identical to string.Format()'s behaviour
• If any of the property names are non-numeric, then all property names will be matched from left-to-right with the Format method's parameters
• Property names may be prefixed with an optional operator, @ or $, to control how the property is serialised
  • The destructuring operator (@) in front of will serialize the object passed in, rather than convert it using ToString().
  • the stringification operator ($) will convert the property value to a string before any other processing takes place, regardless of its type or implemented interfaces.
• Property names may be suffixed with an optional format, e.g. :000, to control how the property is rendered; these format strings behave exactly as their counterparts within the string.Format() syntax

Opening MessageTemplates.sln requires VS2015 Update 3 with the .NET Core tooling to be installed.
See: https://www.microsoft.com/net/core#windows