Cascade is a .NET library providing extension methods for method chaining. Method chaining is a technique to create consecutive method calls in a single line of code. This may help to reduce your code of lines and to improve readability. The library is designed to be lightweight. The only dependency is the mscorlib assembly which is loaded anyway.

Why should I use this library? A good question. At first, all extensions provided by Cascade can be written in good ol' code too. However the extensions allow you writing shorter and code that can be better read.

When should I use this library? To be honest: You can use this library everywhere and at any time. There might be extensions you find useful especially when working with database values, or business objects.

This example provides a very first impression of Cascade and method chaining. Imagine you want to access a deeply nested property within your objects. As you know, a good programmer should always check for null references. This can be tedious work, just for getting a value.

without cascade

public object GetConfigurationValue(Configuration configuration, string sectionKey, string entryKey)
{
    if (configuration != null && configuration.Sections != null)
    {
        Section section = null;
        if (configuration.Sections.ContainsKey(sectionKey))
            section = configuration.Sections[sectionKey];

        if (section != null && section.Entries != null && section.Entries.ContainsKey(entryKey))
            return section.Entries[entryKey];
    }

    return null;
}

With help of Cascade extension methods you can reduce the code a little bit.

with cascade

public object GetConfigurationValue2(Configuration configuration, string sectionKey, string entryKey)
{
    return configuration.IfNotNull(x => x.Sections).Get(sectionKey).IfNotNull(x => x.Entries).Get(entryKey);
}

This one-liner do exactly the same as the method above. The example utilizes two Cascade extension methods IfNotNull and Get. While IfNotNull can be applied on all objects, Get is an dictionary extension. IfNotNull checks whether the object itself is null or not. If the object is null the callback is not executed. In this case the extension is used to return property values if the parent is not null. Get checks whether the dictionary is not null. If it is not null, it checks if it contains an entry with the given key and returns the value.

#Documentation You can find a technical documentation of the extension methods in the wiki.

#License Cascade is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. Feel free to distribute and modify sources and binaries.