How to include 3rd party code in separate versions in one project

Question

I've got an interesting problem on my hands and I can't quite figure out the right way of handling it. This is specific to sitecore, but I would imagine the fix to the issue would be one that could be applied to anyone that has multiple websites running different versions of a framework.

Right now I have 3 separate websites running Sitecore as the framework and CMS for the sites. One website it running code from Sitecore 6.5, another is on 7.0, and another is on 7.0 but will be 7.2 soon enough.

One of the core principles of programming is do not repeat yourself. I want to set up a separate C# project to include handling of Sitecore specific logic and classes. It would mostly include utility like classes that do simple functions to make my life easier checking many kinds of things. These base features are included in each version of Sitecore I am using.

Basically there is a ton of shared functionality between the Sitecore DLLs despite the differences, and I want to be able to write version agnostic code in one place.

I don't care if it needs to build out 3 separate DLLs for each set of Sitecore DLLs I need to compile with, as long as I can keep one base source. Is this sort of thing possible?

Answer 1

How I would handle it:

Setup an independent project and make use of configurations/symbols. A lot of the simple .NET code can probably be universally shared, however give you're working with different versions of SC you would most likely deal with deprecated functionality, API changes, etc. One example I can think of is UIFilterHelpers.ParseDatasourceString (which is deprecated in 7.2 in favor of SearchStringModel.ParseDatasourceString). There are a log of ways to approach this, but for example:

Inline Versions

#if SC7
    IEnumerable<SearchStringModel> searchStringModel = UIFilterHelpers.ParseDatasourceString(Attributes["sc_datasource"]);
#else //SC72
    IEnumerable<SearchStringModel> searchStringModel = SearchStringModel.ParseDatasourceString(Attributes["sc_datasource"]);
#endif

Another approach is to use partial classes and define version-specific implementations (then only include those in the correct project. Maybe you have:

• Common.sln
  • Common.SC65.csproj
    • MyClass.cs [shared]
    • MyClass.SC65.cs
  • Common.SC7.csproj
    • MyClass.cs [shared]
    • MyClass.SC7.cs
  • Common.SC72.csproj
    • MyClass.cs [shared]
    • MyClass.SC72.cs

In the above, MyClass.cs resides in the root and is included in every project. However, the .SC#.cs files are only included in the project targeting the specific sitecore version.

This pattern is used a lot by libraries that target different .NET platforms or various configurations. To use an MVC example, you'd have MyProject.csproj, MyProject.MVC3.csproj, MyProject.MVC4.csproj, MyProject.MVC5.csproj (each with different references and possibly framework versions).