Custom types

Extending Slice

A custom type is a user-defined type that is totally custom because you decide how it's mapped in each programming language. You also need to provide helper methods that encode/decode this type.

For example, you could define a new 128-bit integer type as follows:

module Compute

custom BigInt // a signed 128-bit int

Later on, you can use BigInt as a parameter type or field type just like any other type.

C# mapping

When you compile a custom type with the Slice compiler for C#, you must specify the mapped C# type with the cs::type attribute; otherwise, the Slice compilation fails. The attribute accepts a single string argument: the name of the mapped C# type.

For example:

module Compute

[cs::type("Int128")] // maps Compute::BigInt to System.Int128
custom BigInt

You also need to provide C# methods that the generated code can use to encode and decode this custom type. The name of these methods is derived from the name of the Slice custom type mapped to C# (this mapping can be itself customized with cs::identifier). With our BigInt custom type, the generated code calls:

namespace Compute; // must be in the mapped C# namespace

// You must provide these two classes; the generated code call these methods.

public static class BigIntSliceDecoderExtensions
{
    public static Int128 DecodeBigInt(this ref SliceDecoder decoder) { ... your implementation ... }
}

public static class BigIntSliceEncoderExtensions
{
    public static void EncodeBigInt(this ref SliceEncoder encoder, Int128 value) { ... your implementation ... }
}