Daily Archives: 19 May 2010

2 posts

LINQ to XML and reading large XML files

.NET C#

LINQ to XML makes it relatively easy to read and query XML files. For example consider the following XML file:

<xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
    <users>
        <user name="User1" groupid="4" />
        <user name="User2" groupid="1" />
        <user name="User3" groupid="3" />
        <user name="User4" groupid="1" />
        <user name="User5" groupid="1" />
        <user name="User6" groupid="2" />
        <user name="User7" groupid="1" />
    </users>

Suppose you would like to find all records with groupid > 2. You could be tempted to issue the following query:

XElement doc = XElement.Load("users.xml");
    var users = from u in doc.Elements("user")
                where u.Attribute("groupid") != null &&
                int.Parse(u.Attribute("groupid").Value) > 2
                select u;
    Console.WriteLine("{0} users match query", users.Count());

There’s a flaw in this method. XElement.Load method will load the whole XML file in memory and if this file is quite big, Continue reading →

Dynamic methods in .NET

.NET C#

Using reflection to invoke methods which are not known at compile time might be problematic in performance critical applications. It is roughly 2.5-3.0 times slower than direct method calls. Here’s a sample test I’ve conducted:

class Program
    {
        [DllImport("kernel32.dll")]
        static extern void QueryPerformanceCounter(ref long ticks);

        static PropertyInfo _intProp = typeof(Foo).GetProperty("IntProp", BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance);

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Foo foo = new Foo { IntProp = 10 };
            const int COUNT = 1;
            Console.WriteLine(Measure(() => ReadPropertyWithReflection(foo), COUNT));
            Console.WriteLine(Measure(() => ReadPropertyDirectly(foo), COUNT));
        }

        static void ReadPropertyWithReflection(Foo foo)
        {
            int intProp = (int)_intProp.GetValue(foo, null);
        }

        static void ReadPropertyDirectly(Foo foo)
        {
            int intProp = foo.IntProp;
        }

        static long Measure(Action action, int count)
        {
            long startTicks = 0;
            QueryPerformanceCounter(ref startTicks);
            for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
            {
                action();
            }
            long endTicks = 0;
            QueryPerformanceCounter(ref endTicks);
            return endTicks - startTicks;
        }

        class Foo
        {
            public int IntProp { get; set; }
        }
    }

Here are the results:

Method CPU units
Direct method invocation 796
Reflection method invocation 1986

So using reflection to perform a single property read is 2.5 slower than direct property access.

Dynamic methods can be used to generate and execute a method at run time, without having to declare a dynamic assembly and a dynamic type to contain the method. They are the most efficient way to generate and execute small amounts of code. Continue reading →