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expression-trees.md

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title description keywords author manager ms.date ms.topic ms.prod ms.technology ms.devlang ms.assetid
Expression Trees
Expression Trees
.NET, .NET Core
BillWagner
wpickett
06/20/2016
article
.net-core
.net-core-technologies
dotnet
aceb4719-0d5a-4b19-b01f-b51063bcc54f

Expression Trees

If you have used LINQ, you have experience with a rich library where the Func types are part of the API set. (If you are not familiar with LINQ, you probably want to read the LINQ tutorial and the tutorial on lambda expressions before this one.) Expression Trees provide richer interaction with the arguments that are functions.

You write function arguments, typically using Lambda Expressions, when you create LINQ queries. In a typical LINQ query, those function arguments are transformed into a delegate the compiler creates.

When you want to have a richer interaction, you need to use Expression Trees. Expression Trees represent code as a structure that you can examine, modify, or execute. These tools give you the power to manipulate code during run time. You can write code that examines running algorithms, or injects new capabilities. In more advanced scenarios, you can modify running algorithms, and even translate C# expressions into another form for execution in another environment.

You've likely already written code that uses Expression Trees. Entity Framework's LINQ APIs accept Expression Trees as the arguments for the LINQ Query Expression Pattern. That enables Entity Framework to translate the query you wrote in C# into SQL that executes in the database engine. Another example is Moq, which is a popular mocking framework for .NET.

The remaining sections of this tutorial will explore what Expression Trees are, examine the framework classes that support expression trees, and show you how to work with expression trees. You'll learn how to read expression trees, how to create expression trees, how to create modified expression trees, and how to execute the code represented by expression trees. After reading, you will be ready to use these structures to create rich adaptive algorithms.

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  1. Expression Trees Explained

    Understand the structure and concepts behind Expression Trees.

  2. Framework Types Supporting Expression Trees

    Learn about the structures and classes that define and manipulate expression trees.

  3. Executing Expressions

    Learn how to convert an expression tree represented as a Lambda Expression into a delegate and execute the resulting delegate.

  4. Interpreting Expressions

    Learn how to traverse and examine expression trees to understand what code the expression tree represents.

  5. Building Expressions

    Learn how to construct the nodes for an expression tree and build expression trees.

  6. Translating Expressions

    Learn how to build a modified copy of an expression tree, or translate an expression tree into a different format.

  7. Summing up

    Review the information on expression trees.