Feeding an object literal to ILGenerator

Question

Food obj = ...;
ILGenerator gen = (...).GetILGenerator();
gen.Emit( ?? obj ?? ); // replace this 
gen.Emit(OpCodes.Call, typeof(Person).GetMethod("Eat"));

It's apparently not possible to cleanly push obj onto the evaluation stack, but I am open to ugly hacks which might compromise e.g. portability. ModuleBuilder.DefineInitializedData allows one to store a System.Byte[] in the .sdata. Any ideas?

Edit: the generated method is being emitted as part of a new assembly.

Answer 1

object o = ...;
Func<object> sneaky = () => o;
gen.Emit(OpCodes.Call, sneaky.Method);

On a side note, make sure you can't use System.Linq.Expressions for your purpose. Here's a section of my code in the ANTLR project before and after:

Before. Note that there's a bug in this (can't find the mailing list post about it) that I didn't have to find because the switch to "After" corrected it as a side effect.

private static Func<object, object> BuildAccessor(MethodInfo method)
{
    DynamicMethod dm = new DynamicMethod(method.DeclaringType.Name + method.Name + "MethodAccessor", typeof(object), new Type[] { typeof(object) }, method.DeclaringType);
    var gen = dm.GetILGenerator();

    if (!method.IsStatic)
    {
        gen.Emit(System.Reflection.Emit.OpCodes.Ldarg_0);
        gen.Emit(System.Reflection.Emit.OpCodes.Castclass, method.DeclaringType);
    }

    if (method.IsVirtual && !method.IsFinal)
        gen.EmitCall(System.Reflection.Emit.OpCodes.Callvirt, method, null);
    else
        gen.EmitCall(System.Reflection.Emit.OpCodes.Call, method, null);

    if (method.ReturnType.IsValueType)
        gen.Emit(System.Reflection.Emit.OpCodes.Box, method.ReturnType);

    gen.Emit(System.Reflection.Emit.OpCodes.Ret);
    return (Func<object, object>)dm.CreateDelegate(typeof(Func<object, object>));
}

private static Func<object, object> BuildAccessor(FieldInfo field)
{
    DynamicMethod dm = new DynamicMethod(field.DeclaringType.Name + field.Name + "FieldAccessor", typeof(object), new Type[] { typeof(object) }, field.DeclaringType);

    var gen = dm.GetILGenerator();
    if (field.IsStatic)
    {
        gen.Emit(System.Reflection.Emit.OpCodes.Ldsfld, field);
    }
    else
    {
        gen.Emit(System.Reflection.Emit.OpCodes.Ldarg_0);
        gen.Emit(System.Reflection.Emit.OpCodes.Castclass, field.DeclaringType);
        gen.Emit(System.Reflection.Emit.OpCodes.Ldfld, field);
    }

    if (field.FieldType.IsValueType)
        gen.Emit(System.Reflection.Emit.OpCodes.Box, field.FieldType);

    gen.Emit(System.Reflection.Emit.OpCodes.Ret);
    return (Func<object, object>)dm.CreateDelegate(typeof(Func<object, object>));
}

After:

private static Func<object, object> BuildAccessor(MethodInfo method)
{
    ParameterExpression obj = Expression.Parameter(typeof(object), "obj");

    Expression<Func<object, object>> expr =
        Expression.Lambda<Func<object, object>>(
            Expression.Convert(
                Expression.Call(
                    Expression.Convert(obj, method.DeclaringType),
                    method),
                typeof(object)),
            obj);

    return expr.Compile();
}

private static Func<object, object> BuildAccessor(FieldInfo field)
{
    ParameterExpression obj = Expression.Parameter(typeof(object), "obj");

    Expression<Func<object, object>> expr =
        Expression.Lambda<Func<object, object>>(
            Expression.Convert(
                Expression.Field(
                    Expression.Convert(obj, field.DeclaringType),
                    field),
                typeof(object)),
            obj);

    return expr.Compile();
}

Answer 2

I would suggest serializing the object you need, and emitting a call to deserialize it from a resource stream (possibly cached, if you are going to access it frequently).