How to use more than twenty ports in a PortSet?

In Robotics Studio the operations supported by a service are also defined as ports in a CCR PortSet (Microsoft.Ccr.Core.PortSet). And the former is defined as a set of generic ports: PortSet<T0, ..., T19>.

The problem comes when you want to use more than 20 ports in the same port set, because there is no definition for PortSet<T0,...,T24> for instance.

The good news (as answered by George Chrysanthakopoulos in MSRS forum) is that there is a new variable type PortSet available in MSRS 1.5. Using it you can have as many operations as you want.

Note: In .NET Compact Framework the limitation is 8 generic type arguments for any class. However, this same approach can be applied to work arround this issue.

Follow these steps to use as many ports as you want:

1.- Instead of using the generic PortSet, use the non-generic PortSet class and pass the types of operations as a list in the constructor of PortSet:

Example:

Instead of using:

class DriveControlEvents : PortSet<OnLoad,OnClosed,...>

Use the following:

public class DriveControlEvents : PortSet
{
public DriveControlEvents()

: base(
typeof(OnLoad),
typeof(OnClosed),
typeof(OnChangeJoystick),
typeof(OnConnect),
typeof(OnConnectMotor),
typeof(OnConnectSonar),
typeof(OnConnectSickLRF),
typeof(OnConnectArticulatedArm),
typeof(OnConnectWebCam),
typeof(OnStartService),
typeof(OnMove),
typeof(OnRotate),
typeof(OnTranslate),
typeof(OnEStop),
typeof(OnApplyJointParameters),
typeof(OnDisconnectSonar),
typeof(OnDisconnectSickLRF),
typeof(OnDisconnectWebCam),
typeof(OnLogSetting),
typeof(OnQueryFrame),
typeof(OnConnectSetting),
typeof(OnOptionSettings))
{}
}

2.- If your services posts to itself, replace the post messages with PostUnknownType method.

Example:

private void btnConnectSonar_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
   string SONAR = ServiceByContract(pxsonar.Contract.Identifier);
   if (sonar != null)
   {
       _eventsPort.PostUnknownType(new OnConnectSonar(this, sonar));
   }
}

3.- In the main Arbiter pattern (for instance, the Interleave where you specify the handlers for operations), replace Arbiter.Receive with ArbiterReceiveFromPortSet and Arbiter.ReceiveWithIterator with Arbiter.ReceiveWithIteratorFromPortSet for those operations defined for the non-generic PortSet.