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Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. I have had the pleasure to program in a variety of programming languages throughout the years including the trifecta of C++, Java, and C#. It's often interesting how these three languages are so similar and yet have such key differences as well. Each of them has ...

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. I’ve covered many valuable methods from System.Linq class library before, so you already know it’s packed with extension-method goodness. Today I’d like to cover two small families I’ve neglected to mention before: Skip() and Take(). While these methods seem so ...

When you’re working with WIF and WSTrustChannelFactory when you call the Issue operation, you can also request that a RequestSecurityTokenResponse as an out parameter. However, what can you do with that object? Well, you could keep it around and use it for subsequent calls with the extension method CreateChannelWithIssuedToken – or can you? public static T CreateChannelWithIssuedToke... ChannelFactory<T> factory, SecurityToken issuedToken); As you can see from the method signature ...

This blog entry is intended to provide a narrow and brief look into a way to use the Select extension method that I had until recently overlooked. Every developer who is using IEnumerable extension methods to work with data has been exposed to the Select extension method, because it is a pretty critical piece of almost every query over a collection of objects. The method is defined on type IEnumerable and takes as its argument a function that accepts an item from the collection and returns an object ...

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. LINQ has added so many goodies that can be used to query IEnumerable<T> sequences that it can be easy to lose sight of some of the methods that are unique to each of the collection classes. This week, we will look at the range series of methods in the List<T> ...

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. First of all, thanks for all the well-wishers for me and my family, things are starting to settle down a bit, so I hope to be able to continue to blog at least on a bi-weekly basis – and I’m hoping to sprinkle in some C++ blog entries as well. But for today, we’re ...

Edit: I've now written an improved version of this set of extension methods, which can be found here. Consider these deprecated!I recently wrote a Type.GetInstance() extension method, and used the opportunity to play around with Expression Trees, which I'd recently read up on in C# in Depth. Here's the set of extension methods I came up with, which allow you to quickly create an instance of a Type from the Type itself; like this:// No constructor arguments:MyClass myClassInstance = (MyClass)typeof(MyClass).Ge... ...

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. In the last three weeks, we examined the Action family of delegates (and delegates in general), the Func family of delegates, and the EventHandler family of delegates and how they can be used to support generic, reusable algorithms and classes. This week I will ...

On November 12th 2011, I gave a presentation at Chippewa Valley Code Camp titled, “Kinecting the Dots with the Kinect SDK”. As promised, here is the Slides / Code / Resources to my talk. (click image to download slides) The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a starter kit for applications developers that includes APIs, sample code, and drivers. This SDK enables the academic research and enthusiast communities to create rich experiences by using Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect sensor technology on computers ...

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So I am new to TDD and have been enjoying the ride of learning a new approach – today I came across an interesting situation that I thought I would blog about. I was writing a class that had all sorts of string manipulation in it. I needed some helper methods that would extend my string manipulation abilities. I had read somewhere that I should avoid static methods when doing TDD so I wrote the initial helper class to look something like this… public class StringHelper { public string ReverseStringEx1(string ...

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders post can be found here. Two weeks ago I decided to stop my Little Wonders in the String class, but I recanted and decided to do one more before wrapping up String. So today we’ll look at ways to find a out if a given source String has a target String inside of it (and where). IndexOf() ...

This post is another in a series that contains generic utility classes I’ve developed along the way to help make coding a bit easier. If these already exist as part of the framework and I’ve overlooked them, feel free to let me know! And if you know of a better way to implement them, do the same! I’m never too old to learn something new (I hope!). Update: modified the TryDispose() method to check for IsCompleted first and mark any Task exceptions as handled. So recently, I’ve been moving some older ...

I've never liked having to pass a string to Type.GetInterface() to check if a type implements an interface. This extension method to the Type class lets you check more neatly with a generic: ///<summary> /// Extension methods for the <see cref="Type"/> class. ///</summary> public static class TypeExtensions { ///<summary> /// Returns whether the type implements the given interface ///</summary> ///<param name="value"></param> ///<returns></retu... ...

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders post can be found here. This post continues a series of Little Wonders in the BCL String class. Yes, we all work with strings in .NET daily, so perhaps you already know most of these. However, there are a lot of little fun things that the String class can do that often get overlooked. ...

The ViewModels in my current project had got quite complex; as well as properties copied from model objects, they increasingly had flags used by Views to know whether to render links or sub-sections. The logic which set these properties was bloating Controllers, so I factored it out into objects which populate all non-editable properties of a ViewModel; ViewModelBuilders. The system has the following components: ViewModels - objects which provide a View with the information it needs to be rendered. ...

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders post can be found here. Today we will look at five easy ways to aggregate sequences. Often times when we’re looking at a sequence of objects, we want to do perform some sort of aggregation across those sequences to find a calculated result from the sequence. The methods we will be looking ...

Download Source Code Challenge Just had the first chance to apply PLINQ (Parallel LINQ) to the real task. When I am playing around with some new technology everything works fine, the real understanding comes along with challenges in a real use case. Currently I am working on application which processes large amount of text data gathering statistics on word occurrences (see: Source Code Word Cloud). Here what the simplified core of my code is doing. Enumerate through all files with *.txt extension. ...

In this Issue: Mike Talbot, Michael Crump, Kunal Chowdhury, Cheryl Simmons, Joost van Schaik(-2-), Shantimohan Elchuri, Jesse Liberty(-2-), Peter Torr, Pete Vickers, Derik Whittaker, and Den Delimarsky. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Wordle Like Tag Cloud for Silverlight" Mike Talbot WP7: "Speed and distance calculation extension methods for Windows Phone 7" Joost van Schaik Shoutouts: Check out Pete Brown's interview on .NET Rocks: My .NET Rocks Interview Koen Zwikstra announced a July update: Silverlight ...

Introduction The official Kinect SDK has been out for a while now and I haven’t seen many people actually doing “how-to” post to get others started developing for it. I decided that I would help kick-start the movement by creating a series called, “Kinecting the Dots”. This is going to be a series of blog posts covering questions or concerns that I’ve seen in the community. I am planning on answering questions so if you have one that you want answered then please contact me by using the form above. ...

I’ve been playing with the Kinect SDK Beta for the past few days and have noticed a few projects on CodePlex worth checking out. I decided to blog about them to help spread awareness. If you want to learn more about Kinect SDK then you check out my”Busy Developer’s Guide to the Kinect SDK Beta”. Let’s get started: KinectContrib is a set of VS2010 Templates that will help you get started building a Kinect project very quickly. Once you have it installed you will have the option to select the following ...

The Kinect is awesome. From day one, I’ve said this thing has got potential. After playing with several open-source Kinect projects, I am please to announce that Microsoft has released the official SDK beta on 6/16/2011. I’ve created this quick start guide to get you up to speed in no time flat. Let’s begin: What is it? The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a starter kit for applications developers that includes APIs, sample code, and drivers. This SDK enables the academic research and enthusiast communities ...

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders post can be found here. On this post I will finish examining the System.Linq methods in the static class Enumerable by examining two extension methods Count() and DefaultIfEmpty(), and one static method Empty(). The Empty() static method How many times have you had to return an empty collection ...

This blog is the first one of a series of blogs addressing programming practices and lessons learned related to cloud computing. While most developers will be familiar at least conceptually with the techniques exposed, I will provide background information and code samples in an attempt to explain why they are so critical in cloud software development. While most of the information provided will be using Windows Azure and/or SQL Azure, these concepts apply to cloud computing in general. Exponential ...

“Design Patterns 100? is a prerequisite for .NET Developers. (Part 4 – Excerpts from July 2010 – PhillyNJ.NET Presentation) Continuing our discussion from Part-3 we ask. What are the “Gang of Four” (GoF) Structural Patterns and where can we find them in the .NET Framework? Let’s look at a list of the Strutural Patterns as defined by the GoF. Adapter Pattern – is used to match interfaces of different classes Bridge Pattern – is used to separate an object’s interface from its implementation Composite ...

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. Today we are going to examine the LINQ set operations that are part of the IEnumerable<T> extension methods. Now, most of the time when people think of set operations they think of the math or logic classes they are usually taught in, but really these LINQ methods have a much larger appeal and applicability than just math ...

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. Most of my time this week has been spent finishing the current iteration at work and updating a presentation for the Springfield DNUG, so today’s post will be a bit on the lighter side, but I wanted to continue my post series so I thought it would be a good time to quickly mention the ElementAt() and Last() LINQ extension methods. ...

The list provided below is my “Best-Of” FREE Frameworks, Tools and Controls for Windows Phone 7. I have used everything listed below in an my WP7 applications. Most of them are in the marketplace at this point and some are still in development. Let’s get started. If you are developing WP7 Applications, this is one that you have probably heard of already. It is Microsoft’s official set of controls that comes complete with full source code of course. Project Description: Welcome to the Silverlight ...

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can really help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. Today we’re going to look at two more handy LINQ extension methods: the Any() and All() methods. These methods can help you examine an enumerable collection to determine if any, or all, of the items in the collection meet some logical condition. Any() – Checks for at least one match The Any() method is a LINQ extension ...

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can really help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. Today we're going to look at two LINQ extension methods that are both very similar and yet very different. Logically, First() and Single() serve similar purposes, but there is a subtle difference between these two that if you aren't expecting it may give you very different behaviors. First() - Retrieves the first occurrence ...

In this Issue: Michael Crump, Jeremy Likness, Matthew Delisle, Xianzhong Zhu, Nigel Sampson, Jeff Prosise(-2-), Andrea Boschin, Mike Ormond, Jeff Wilcox, and Bil Simser. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight Scaling and Anti-Aliasing Issues" Jeremy Likness WP7: "AgFx Windows Phone App and Data Caching Framework" Jeff Wilcox Shoutouts: The tool Mike Ormond discussed in a post listed below is WP7 Screenshot Tool by Cory Smith DiscountASP.NET has a post up about the latest SQL Injection attack going ...

This post is another in a series that will just contain little GUCs (Generic Utility Classes) I’ve developed along the way. If these already exist as part of the framework and I’ve overlooked them, feel free to let me know! And if you know of a better way to implement them, do the same! I’m never too old to learn something new (I hope!). I've blogged in the past about how useful the overlooked HashSet class can be (here) and about the very useful ToDictionary(), ToList(), and ToLookup() LINQ extension ...

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can really help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. LINQ has added so many wonderful extension methods to our .NET toolbox! In particular, there are a few methods that are useful for creating a collection from an IEnumerable<T> instance. The ToDictionary() and ToList() extension methods, for example, are handy for taking an IEnumerable<T> and creating a Dictionary ...

I have written about adding support for specifications to NHibernate’s ISession type. Shortly afterwards Paul Stovell moaned on twitter that no one had demonstrated how to mock ISession. Since my implementation relied upon an extension method (QueryBySpecification) I googled how to mock extension methods – and discovered that you can’t. What I did find was Daniel Cazzulino’s post about converting extension methods to methods that return a Func that exposes your extension method. That way you can ...

You cant pass MultiD arrays accross the wire using WCF - you need to pass jagged arrays. heres 2 extension methods that will allow you to convert prior to serialzation and convert back after deserialization: public static T[,] ToMultiD<T>(this T[][] jArray) { int i = jArray.Count(); int j = jArray.Select(x => x.Count()).Aggregate(0, (current, c) => (current > c) ? current : c); var mArray = new T[i, j]; for (int ii = 0; ii < i; ii++) { for (int jj = 0; jj < j; jj++) { mArray[ii, ...

Applications get data from lots of different sources. The most common is to get data from a database or a web service. Typically, we encapsulate calls to a database in a Repository object and we create some sort of IRepository interface as an abstraction to decouple between layers and enable easier unit testing by leveraging faking and mocking. This works great for database interaction. However, when consuming a RESTful web service, this is is not always the best approach. The WCF Web APIs that are ...

Sorry for the long blogging hiatus. First it was, of course, the holidays hustle and bustle, then my brother and his wife gave birth to their son, so I’ve been away from my blogging for two weeks. Background: Finding an item’s index in List<T> is easy… Many times in our day to day programming activities, we want to find the index of an item in a collection. Now, if we have a List<T> and we’re looking for the item itself this is trivial: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = ...

Once again we consider some of the lesser known classes and keywords of C#. Today we will be looking at two set implementations in the System.Collections.Generic namespace: HashSet<T> and SortedSet<T>. Even though most people think of sets as mathematical constructs, they are actually very useful classes that can be used to help make your application more performant if used appropriately. For more of the "Little Wonders" posts, see the index here. A Background From Math In mathematical ...

In this Issue: András Velvárt, Tony Champion, Joost van Schaik, Jesse Liberty, Shawn Wildermuth, John Papa, Michael Crump, Sacha Barber, Alex Knight, Peter Kuhn, Senthil Kumar, Mike Hole, and WindowsPhoneGeek. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Create Custom Speech Bubbles in Silverlight." Michael Crump WP7: "Architecting WP7 - Part 9 of 10: Threading" Shawn Wildermuth Expression Blend: "PathListBox: Text on the path" Alex Knight From SilverlightCream.com: Behaviors for accessing the Windows Phone 7 MarketPlace ...

I feel compelled to post this blog because I find I’m repeatedly posting this same code in silverlight and windows-phone-7 answers in Stackoverflow. One common task that we feel we need to do is burrow into the visual tree in a Silverlight or Windows Phone 7 application (actually more recently I found myself doing this in WPF as well). This allows access to details that aren’t exposed directly by some controls. A good example of this sort of requirement is found in the “Restoring exact scroll position ...

I have been using Rx for over a month now and can’t even begin at telling how beautiful it really is and how much it has simplified my life especially working with UI declaratively and without having to worry about Dispatchers, threading etc., and I ended up rewriting most of the custom controls I have build over time to support Rx. And have been a big fan of Observable pattern and WeakEventListeners again had their own limitation which I always found a bit intimidating and for me Reactive Extensions ...

This evening I thought I would look into something that I have been meaning to look into for a while, but just haven’t given the time of day. Initially I wanted to brush up on some LINQ, but after going over the definition of LINQ, I stumbled across extension methods… I have heard of them quite a bit – but never really bothered to see what they are… So the official MSDN explanation says the following… “Extension methods enable you to "add" methods to existing types without creating a new derived ...

The Little Wonders series received so much positive response I decided to make it a recurring theme in my blog as new ones popped in my head. There are two simple, yet great, LINQ extension methods you may or may not know about, but that can really simplify the task of converting collection queries into collections: ToDictionary() and ToList(). Introduction: LINQ and Deferred Execution Depending on your knowledge of LINQ, you may be oblivious as to what many of these query expressions do behind the ...

I received (by chance, mostly) a Netduino last tuesday. Netduino is an open-source hardware project based on Arduino and the .Net Micro Framework. And it’s extremely cool. I’m a C# developer and I was always interested in electronics. This is an excellent tool to start to understand that incredible world. I was about to buy an Arduino when the Netduino fell on my lap, so I was really happy about it. Netduino has various disadvantages over Arduino (for starters, it’s more expensive, not all the shields ...

Extension methods were introduced with the .NET 3.5 framework as a mechanism to add methods to extend existing types without modifying the original assembly. This is how the Linq methods were implemented to enable some very powerfull predicate function based operations to be performed over all existing collection types. Searching for web controls on a page is one of those tasks that seems to come up for all kinds of reason while programming using web forms. I was reminded of this problem recently: ...

Update: I have now placed the zip containing the source for the end result of part 1 and 2 of this service template here. Two weeks ago I began the series with a discussion on how to make a new C# Windows Service template that is “debuggable” (you can find the article here). I had then intended the next week to follow up with a discussion on how to modify that template to make the service “self-installing”. Unfortunately, with my work schedule I wasn’t able to complete the series last week due to ...

Its all about creating a dynamic menu control in WPF. The source for this menu control is xml file. This sample is also an good example of adding controls dynamically and assigning animations to them dynamically. sample xml file is given below. <MenuList> <Menu id="2" image="images/Firefox-48x48... name="browser"> <SubMenu image="images/Firefox-48x48... file="firefox.exe">Firef... <SubMenu image="images/Internet-Expl... file="IExplore.exe">IE&l... ...

In this Issue: Michael Washington, Richard Waddell, Jeff Blankenburg(-2-, -3-), Dejan Jakovic, Peter Kuhn, Domagoj Pavlešic, Thomas Martinsen, Jesse Liberty, and Joost van Schaik(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight Unsaved Data Detection " Michael Washington WP7: "Extension methods for tomb stoning the Windows Phone 7 model" Joost van Schaik Expression Blend: "Simple Layout Techniques In Blend " Richard Waddell Shoutouts: Mark your calendars, because Beth Massi announced MSDN Radio on ...

I apologize in advance to those waiting for part 2 of the Windows Services post I did last week. I will have a follow-up post next week, this week at work has just been crazy and I haven’t had as much time to devote to the code examples as I’d like to polish it. So instead I thought I’d throw a quick post out on what I’d like to see in the future versions of C#. A lot of folks are posting things they would like to see in C# 5.0 and beyond. There’s a great list on Stack Overflow (here) and a great ...