Every once in a long while, I have a class name that appears in two different namespaces (there are other kinds of namespace confusions that I can run into but this is most common).
If I use ConfigurationManager, for example, the compiler insists that I either qualify the class name with the namespace (as Configuration.ConfigurationManager) or qualify a bunch of other ConfigurationManager classes with their namespace. I end up with this code:
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Posted by Peter Vogel on 02/18/20150 comments
If you want to process all the items in a list, you can write a For…Each loop…or you can just call the List's ForEach method and pass it a lambda expression containing the processing you want. This code, for example, sets the OrderStatus property on a list of StatusChange objects to Ordered:
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Posted by Peter Vogel on 02/16/20150 comments
This could have been the simplest tip I've ever written: In Visual Studio, if you just want to cut or copy one line, you don't have to select the line. All you have to do is put your cursor on the line and press Control+X or Control+C. Visual Studio will cut or copy the whole line, including the carriage return.
Here's why this isn't the simplest tip I've ever written: There's a downside to this feature. In any other application you must select something before cutting or copying. If you haven't selected anything and accidentally press Ctrl+X or Ctrl+C then nothing happens. Critically, this means that an accidental cut or copy won't cause you to lose what's on the clipboard: No harm, no foul.
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Posted by Peter Vogel on 02/12/20150 comments
Sometimes you need a string that's filled with a specific number of characters. There are lots of ways to do that but the easiest is to use the New keyword with the String class because the New keyword gives you access to the String object's constructors.
In fact, the String class has three constructors. The first one initializes the string with whatever you pass to the constructor. This one initializes the string to four equals signs:
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Posted by Peter Vogel on 02/09/20150 comments
The custom Exception class I described in a column earlier this month will work fine … as long as the .NET Framework doesn't need to serialize your Exception object to return it to a remote client. If you want to make the extra effort, you can add serialization support to your custom Exception class.
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Posted by Peter Vogel on 02/06/20150 comments
Often after I've cut or pasted some text, I find that my code isn't formatted correctly any more. As long as your code is syntactically correct (i.e. no stray brackets or End Ifs without matching Ifs), Visual Studio will reformat your whole file with one key chord: Hold down the Control key and then press K, followed by D.
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Posted by Peter Vogel on 01/30/20150 comments
You're debugging some code and you need to know the value of a string variable. You move your mouse over the variable and -- voila! -- a tooltip appears showing the value of the string.
But, when you think about that, things get complicated. After all, a string has many properties: How did Visual Studio know that the property you're interested in is the value of the string and not, for example, the string's length? And, more importantly, why don't you get that feature with your classes? When you hover the mouse over a variable pointing at one of your classes all that you get is your class' name: Distinctly unhelpful.
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Posted by Peter Vogel on 01/26/20150 comments
It's no secret that I love interfaces (I did a whole column about them once). As you add more interfaces to your application you may find that you have several interfaces that look very much alike. These two, for example:
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Posted by Peter Vogel on 01/22/20150 comments
As my column Creating Complex XML Documents with XML Literals indicates, I think your best choice for creating complex XML documents is to use XML Literals with the XElement object. As I note in that column, generating the XML document from an XElement object is easy: Just call the Save method, passing a file name. That gives you a beautiful XML document, with each nested element nicely indented and starting on a new line.
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Posted by Peter Vogel on 01/16/20150 comments
I know that I keep going on about this, but the best way to speed up your application is to retrieve all the data you need on each trip to the database and make as few trips to your database as you can. One way to do that when retrieving rows is to retrieve multiple sets of rows on each trip.
This means that you can reduce trips to the database in a stored procedure by returning multiple sets of rows from a single stored procedure with a single call. If you're using ADO.NET, you can combine multiple Select statements in your Command object's CommandText property (just make sure you put a semicolon between the statements):
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Posted by Peter Vogel on 01/13/20150 comments
As I mentioned in a previous tip, Giving Your Database Updates Enough Time, I had a client contact me with a problem: The updates for an unusually large batch of data in their online application was taking so long that the updates were timing out. As a short-term fix, we increased the update time to just over two minutes but we all recognized the right, long-term solution was to reduce the time the updates were taking.
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Posted by Peter Vogel on 01/08/20150 comments
My client was having a problem processing some very large batches of data in their online application: Their SQL updates were timing out. I offered to look at ways of fixing the problem (more on that in a later tip) but, in the meantime, the client asked me to see about "fixing the timeout problem."
To give the updates more time to complete, my client already tried playing with the ConnectionTimeout value in the connection string used to connect to the database. However, that value just controls how long ADO.NET will wait when opening a connection -- it has no effect on the time allowed for an update statement to complete.
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Posted by Peter Vogel on 12/18/20140 comments