Comments on: 15 Helpful .NET Extension Methods to Increase Productivity

By: Thanks for the review Channel9! « {Programming} & Life

Thanks for the review Channel9! « {Programming} & Life — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 12:08:28 +0000

[...] (Dan Fernandez and Brian Keller), I really appreciate the video review regarding my post “15 Helpful .NET Extension Methods to Increase Productivity” and the plug to my website! The extension methods were nothing [...]

By: Graham O'Neale

Graham O'Neale — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:59:38 +0000

@James: It shouldn’t. This has been fixed. Cheers dude.

By: Graham O'Neale

Graham O'Neale — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:45:18 +0000

@Peter: the code should have loaded on the page in source code formatting? Do you see the scrollable div?

By: James Curran

James Curran — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:03:17 +0000

Why, in ToInt(defaultValue), does a null or empty string convert to 0 instead of defaultValue?

By: Peter Parker

Peter Parker — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 08:50:00 +0000

Did I miss something? Where are the downloads? I don’t see how I can get your code?! :-/ Please help.

By: Graham O'Neale

Graham O'Neale — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:02:44 +0000

@Robert: Sorry, I said anything because I saw the object type input, but the “where T : struct” constraint I understand, nice, as all value types derive from a struct and as you say ref types do not need to be changed. Very cool.

By: Robert Hanlon

Robert Hanlon — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:46:38 +0000

Graham, no, my ToNullable method converts things cast as object to the Nullable<> form of some value type (int, double, bool, and DateTime get the most mileage). The compiler checks that these are value types with the “where T : struct” constraint. Reference types, including string, don’t need ToNullable, because those variables can already be set to null.

It’s most effective when reading from the database:

int? imageKey = row["imagekey"].ToNullable();

(…where “row” is a DataRow, natch.)

It essentially replaces this code:
int? imageKey;
if (row["imagekey"] == null) imageKey = null;
else imageKey = (int)row["imageKey"];

It doesn’t solve any groundbreaking problems, but it does clean code up, which is what I find extension methods are best at.

By: Graham O'Neale

Graham O'Neale — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:36:26 +0000

@Steve: You bet. That would be horrible. No really because I am a consistency freak and I think I just wanted them all three characters. But then I ruined it with ToBool & ToDateTime anyway….

By: Graham O'Neale

Graham O'Neale — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:58:21 +0000

I completely forgot about my HtmlHelperExtensions which were stored in another file! I have just updated my samples.

By: Graham O'Neale

Graham O'Neale — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:50:04 +0000

@redsquare: Wow, cool redsquare. Thanks for sharing the link. Hadn’t seen this.

@Rob Packwood: Nice, looks like a great generic implementation for IsBetween().

@Chris: Perhaps. This was merely a collection of methods I’ve found useful over time and haven’t really looked back on them too much – I’ve never encountered these exceptions so I guess never thought on how they could be improved!

@Robert Hanlon: That’s kinda cool Rob, so it will convert anything to a Nullable type?

@Mark Rasmussen: Yes I see where you’re coming from Mark, but I don’t think there is a reason to dislike it. When I say that, it is from my perspective and my disciplines, I would use it intentionally as a “convenience” to Convert.ToInt32() and it should be no less thought out than if you were to use the original convert method. I’ve been working with a lot of legacy systems of late, cutting up files and such, so I have found the ToInt() method personally incredibly useful with what I needed to do.