Exploring dynamic pages: run-time compiled executables

[acrm]

What is good in pre-compiled executables?

• We combine static and dynamic part for the same page in one source file
• We separate logic of one page from another

But what drawbacks we get with this approach?

• Extra spend of system resources: for each page we need at least one extra process of operational system, with dedicated memory address space, system handlers and other pricy resources.
• Extra development infrastructure: for each page we need besides the source file itself also a project file, etc.
• More development routine: after any changes in any page's source we have to recompile corresponding project

Any ideas how to overcome these disadvantages, keeping all benefits?

[EkaSe]

@acrm Why don't we have classes for each page inside our project instead of having separate applications?

[acrm]

Good question! Honestly, I just haven't considered such variant. It should works and solve all mentioned problems. But there is one requirement that I also want to be met. It is a low coupling between infrustructure and business logic. Let's consider our Middleware is a webserver model and our pages are site's buiseness logic. Webserver shouldn't change if we make some changes in site's webpages, add, or remove some of them. And webpages also shouldn't be changed if we make some internal changes in webserver. So, we do can implement all pages as classes of same project with infrastructure, but it's obligate not to reference webpages classes from the Middleware. We need to figure out some mechanism, that calls corresponding webpage class for request, without knowing in advance which pages exist. Let's do this.

[EkaSe]

@acrm Then I can imagine some perversion like reading and invoking the code from existing string or text file. Another variant is to have some predefined text files with HTML and certain marks (code-like expressions?) inside that can be parsed and interpreted by our webserver in order to obtain correct HTML with real-time generated data

[acrm]

You anticipate our next step) That's right, let's start from code files, that will be compiled right in runtime, and invoked immediately.

You can start with that example: Runtime compilation

[EkaSe]

@acrm I used http://www.tugberkugurlu.com/archive/compiling-c-sharp-code-into-memory-and-executing-it-with-roslyn instead of CodeDom (.Net Core dislikes CodeDom - see https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/12180).