| title | description | keywords | author | manager | ms.date | ms.topic | ms.prod | ms.technology | ms.devlang | ms.assetid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Introduction to Delegates |
Introduction to Delegates |
.NET, .NET Core |
BillWagner |
wpickett |
06/20/2016 |
article |
.net-core |
.net-core-technologies |
dotnet |
59b61d77-84e5-457b-8da5-fb5f24ca6ed6 |
Delegates provide a late binding mechanism in .NET. Late Binding means that you create an algorithm where the caller also supplies at least one method that implements part of the algorithm.
For example, consider sorting a list of stars in an astronomy application. You may choose to sort those stars by their distance from the earth, or the magnitude of the star, or their perceived brightness.
In all those cases, the Sort() method does essentially the same thing: arranges the items in the list based on some comparison. The code that compares two stars is different for each of the sort orderings.
These kinds of solutions have been used in software for half a century. The C# language delegate concept provides first class language support, and type safety around the concept.
As you'll see later in this series, the C# code you write for algorithms like this is type safe, and leverages the language and the compiler to ensure that the types match for arguments and return types.
The language designers enumerated several goals for the feature that eventually became delegates.
The team wanted a common language construct that could be used for any late binding algorithms. That enables developers to learn one concept, and use that same concept across many different software problems.
Second, the team wanted to support both single and multi-cast method calls. (Multicast delegates are delegates where multiple methods have been chained together. You'll see examples later in this series.
The team wanted delegates to support the same type safety that developers expect from all C# constructs.
Finally, the team recognized that an event pattern is one specific pattern where delegates, or any late binding algorithm) is very useful. The team wanted to ensure that the code for delegates could provide the basis for the .NET event pattern.
The result of all that work was the delegate and event support in C# and .NET. The remaining articles in this section will cover the language features, the library support, and the common idioms that are used when you work with delegates.
You'll learn about the delegate keyword and what code it generates. You'll
learn about the features in the System.Delegate class, and how those features
are used. You'll learn how to create type safe delegates, and how to create methods
that can be invoked through delegates. You'll also learn how to work with delegates
and events by using Lambda expressions. You'll see where delegates become one of the
building blocks for LINQ. You'll learn how delegates are the basis for the .NET
event pattern, and how they are different.
Overall, you'll see how delegates are an integral part of programming in .NET and working with the framework APIs.
Let's get started.