Fluent functional style writer API

Applies To: # OData core lib v7 supported OData Core Lib V7

In the previous section, paired WriteStart()/WriteEnd() calls have been made to write payloads. In this version, a new set of fluent functional-style API has been introduced as an improvement over the previous API which is rather primitive, requiring paired WriteStart()/WriteEnd() calls.

The new API replaces paired WriteStart()/WriteEnd() calls with a single Write() call. Write() comes in two flavors. The first flavor takes a single argument which is the thing you want to write. For example, writer.Write(entry); is equivalent to

writer.WriteStart(entry);
writer.WriteEnd();

The second flavor takes two arguments. The first argument is same as before. The second argument is an Action delegate which is to be invoked in-between writing the first argument. For instance,

writer.Write(outer, () => writer
    .Write(inner1)
    .Write(inner2));

is equivalent to

writer.WriteStart(outer);
    writer.WriteStart(inner1);
    writer.WriteEnd();
    writer.WriteStart(inner2);
    writer.WriteEnd();
writer.WriteEnd();

In general, this new API should be preferred to the previous one.