KoKo 2.0.2

Documentation on GitHub

Summary

Knockout for Cocoa, for C#

KoKo lets you create Property objects as members of your model classes.

Unlike native C# properties, KoKo Property objects automatically fire change events. They can be composed from multiple other Properties without the dependencies being aware of the dependents, and without writing any boilerplate event handling code.

These properties are very similar to what you would find in Knockout, MobX, and WPF's DependencyProperty. They do not rely on a presentation layer like WPF, and they do not require you to import and understand a large, overblown, confusing library like .NET Reactive Extensions.

This library is a port of KoKo ("Knockout for Cocoa"), a Swift library by @abrindam.

Usage

1. Create a class to act as your business or view model.
2. Import the KoKo.Property namespace.
3. Add some Property fields.
4. Get and set their Value.

Example

This is a just a silly, simple example. Don't actually represent people's names this way.

using KoKo.Property;

namespace Project1 {

    internal class Person {

        private readonly StoredProperty<string> firstName;
        private readonly StoredProperty<string> lastName;
        internal readonly Property<string> fullName;

        internal Person(string firstName, string lastName) {
            this.firstName = new StoredProperty<string>(firstName);
            this.lastName = new StoredProperty<string>(lastName);

            fullName = DerivedProperty<string>.Create(this.firstName, this.lastName, (first, last) => $"{first} {last}");
        }

        private void changeFirstName(string newFirstName) {
            firstName.Value = newFirstName;
        }

    }
}

Now you can get a person object's autogenerated full name,

var person = new Person("Alice", "Smith");
Console.WriteLine(person.fullName.Value); // Alice Smith

and if you change a dependency value, the dependent full name will be automatically updated.

person.ChangeFirstName("Bob");
Console.WriteLine(person.fullName.Value); // Bob Smith

You can also use Properties with databinding:

private void Form1_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e) {
    personNameLabel.DataBindings.Add("Text", model.fullName, "Value");
}