RELEASE: FormattableObject an Aggregating reflection-based ToString() implementation

Well, here you go, it's my implementation of a FormattableObject that I mentioned earlier. Take a look at the comments, Mark Miller had some great ideas, the best of which being a CodeRush plugin that handles the static analysis at design time and makes it harder to mess up these strings.

You can do this:

[Test]
public void MakePersonFormattedStringWithFormat()
{
    Person p = new Person();
    string foo = p.ToString("{BirthDate:D} My name is {FirstName} {LastName} and I'm cool.");
    Assert.AreEqual("Tuesday, January 22, 1974 My name is Scott Hanselman and I'm cool.", foo);
}

[Test]
public void MakePersonFormattedStringWithFormatAndChineseCulture()
{
    Person p = new Person();
    string foo = p.ToString("{BirthDate:D} My name is {FirstName} {LastName} and I'm cool.",new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("zh-cn"));
    Assert.AreEqual("1974?1?22? My name is Scott Hanselman and I'm cool.", foo);
}

You can either:

Derive your objects from FormattableObject and you get these ToString implementations for free

Implement a few ToString's and IFormattable yourself and delegate over to the static implementations in FormattableObject:

  
public string ToString(string format, System.IFormatProvider formatProvider)
{
    return Corillian.Voyager.Common.ObjectFormatString.ToString(this,format,formatProvider);
}
 
public string ToString(string format)
{
    return this.ToString(format,null);
}