Chapter 30
Managed Extensibility Framework
WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?
- Architecture of the Managed Extensibility Framework
- MEF using Attributes
- Convention-based Registration
- Contracts
- Exports and imports of parts
- Containers used by hosting applications
- Catalogs for finding parts
WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER
The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at http://www.wrox.com/remtitle.cgi?isbn=1118314425 on the Download Code tab. The code for this chapter is divided into the following major examples:
- Attribute-Based Sample
- Convention-Based Sample
- WPFCalculator
INTRODUCTION
Add-ins (or plugins) enable you to add functionality to an existing application. You can create a hosting application that gains more and more functionality over time—such functionality might be written by your team of developers, but different vendors can also extend your application by creating add-ins.
Today, add-ins are used with many different applications, such as Internet Explorer and Visual Studio. Internet Explorer is a hosting application that offers an add-in framework that is used by many companies to provide extensions when viewing web pages. The Shockwave Flash Object enables you to view web pages with Flash content. The Google toolbar offers specific Google features that can be accessed quickly from Internet Explorer. Visual Studio also has an add-in model that enables you to extend Visual Studio with different levels of extensions.
For your custom applications, it has always ...
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