Golf Trip Foursome Picker Math Problem

Scott Muc — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 03:48:23 GMT

Every year I go out on a golf trip with 10-16 guys. One of the biggest problems with the event is making sure everyone golfs with everyone, and that no-one seems to golf with the same person too often. My math skills are sorely lacking right now and could use some help to write a little application that takes a pool of players, a count of how many rounds are to be played, and output the assigned groups for each round.

Right now I don't even know where to begin. I think the first crack at the problem should have the number of golfers % 4 equal to zero as a start. Then eventually refine it for when we have to deal with a threesome or perhaps more than one threesome.

I would love to gather as much feedback as possible. It doesn't have to solve my problem but at least a nudge in the right direction would be great. I promise to post my code when this gets finished.

I'm going write my first version that simply does random picks from a pool without replacement for each round and see that stats of that method.

string.ToTitleCase()

Scott Muc — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 17:58:00 GMT

Strange how the string class almost has everything you need. I came across the need to Title Case some text, because I couldn't guarantee the text that I receive is properly formatted. I automatically assumed I could simply use .ToTitleCase() on my string. Woops, compilation error!

Luckily a search found a quick and easy solution, and I wrote the beginnings of my StringHelper class. It's first method? The .ToTitleCase() method.

public static class StringHelper

    public static string ToTitleCase(string text)

        return StringHelper.ToTitleCase(text, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

    public static string ToTitleCase(string text, CultureInfo cultureInfo)

        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(text)) return string.Empty;

        TextInfo textInfo = cultureInfo.TextInfo;

        return textInfo.ToTitleCase(text.ToLower());

Some credit goes to this post for letting me know the all upper case issue.

Yeah, I know this has been discussed eons ago. This is mostly for my own reference.

A Refactoring Tale

Scott Muc — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:10:00 GMT

I'm a firm believer that using the Repeater control is the best compromise in flexibility and ease of use for displaying collections of data. Much of my databinding code looks like the following real world example:

CodeBehind

void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

    if (!Page.IsPostBack)

        Collection<Venue>  venues = ConcertDataService.GetVenues();

        rptVenues.DataSource = venues;

        rptVenues.DataBind();

.aspx or .ascx

<asp:Repeater id="rptVenues" runat="server">

    <HeaderTemplate><div class="venues"></HeaderTemplate>

    <ItemTemplate>

        <div>

            <%# ((Venue) Container.DataItem).Name %>

            <%# ((Venue) Container.DataItem).Address.City %>, <%# ((Venue) Container.DataItem).Address.Province %>

        </div>

    </ItemTemplate>

    <FooterTemplate></div></FooterTemplate>

</asp:Repeater>

Today I refactored some code so I could get rid of the Addresses table in the database. To make a long story short, the Address table wasn't working the way I anticipated. Triggers are required to create and delete address tuples, and the whole design had lots of code smells. I merged the columns of the address table into the Venues table and eleminated 3 stored procedures, 2 triggers, and 1 join inside a view. I got rid of the Address class and attempted to re-compile my code. As expected, my code broke at all Venue code where I was using the Address class. I simply converted the Address properties into properties of the Venue class. It didn't take long to update the code so that I am using Venue.City instead of Venue.Address.City.

All good, right? I deploy my binaries to my development site and I start getting exceptions on certain pages. Invalid properties?! Oh, but of course. Compiling the codebehind doesn't ensure that the .aspx pages are not broken. The fix is trivial, but compile time discovery of these errors would be nice. The following databind code shows the difference:

.aspx or .ascx

<asp:Repeater id="rptVenues" runat="server">

    <HeaderTemplate><div class="venues"></HeaderTemplate>

    <ItemTemplate>

        <div>

            <%# ((Venue) Container.DataItem).Name %>

            <%# ((Venue) Container.DataItem).City %>, <%# ((Venue) Container.DataItem).Province %>

        </div>

    </ItemTemplate>

    <FooterTemplate></div></FooterTemplate>

</asp:Repeater>

Luckily I am working on a fairly small project so I only had a half a dozen .aspx and .ascx files to update (and TextPad's "Find in Files" feature really did most of the work).

On the way home on the bus I thought about the work I had to go through to perform this refactoring. Is explicit property calls in the .aspx a good idea? Second, I wouldn't have had this problem if I kept the Address class hidden and used Venue properties in the first place. Let's ignore the fact that I implemented the class incorrectly ;-).

Would using Web/User controls inside the Repeater be a better way of implementing this behaviour? If I had done it that way, the compiler would have caught the missing properties. Here's my alternate implementation:

CodeBehind

void Page_Init(object sender, EventArgs e)

    rptVenues.ItemDataBound += new RepeaterItemEventHandler(rptVenues_ItemDataBound);

void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

    if (!Page.IsPostBack)

        Collection<Venue>  venues = ConcertDataService.GetVenues();

        rptVenues.DataSource = venues;

        rptVenues.DataBind();

void rptVenues_ItemDataBound(object sender, RepeaterItemEventArgs e)

    if (e.Item.ItemType == ListItemType.Item || e.Item.ItemType == ListItemType.AlternatingItem)

        Venue venue = (Venue) e.Item.DataItem;

        Literal litName = (Literal) e.Item.FindControl("litName");

        Literal litCity = (Literal) e.Item.FindControl("litCity");

        Literal litProvince = (Literal) e.Item.FindControl("litProvince");

        litCity.Text = venue.City; // used to be venue.Address.City

        litProvince.Text = venue.Province // used to be venue.Address.Province

.aspx or .ascx

<asp:Repeater id="rptVenues" runat="server">

    <HeaderTemplate><div class="venues"></HeaderTemplate>

    <ItemTemplate>

        <div>

            <asp:Literal id="litName" runat="server" />

            <asp:Literal id="litCity" runat="server" />, <asp:Literal id="litProvince" runat="server" />

        </div>

    </ItemTemplate>

    <FooterTemplate></div></FooterTemplate>

</asp:Repeater>

What's changed is that I now have code in the ItemDataBound event handler for the repeater. It's a lot of extra code, but it does allow a lot of room for future changes without much front end adjustment. Recompiling will find errors in the class structure which I really love.

It's sort of a toss up for me. I love the quick and simple data binding in the ItemTemplate of the Repeater, but after refactoring a bunch of aspx files today I might turn a new leaf. Has anyone else dealt with this sort of issue? What are your thoughts?

C#

Golf Trip Foursome Picker Math Problem

string.ToTitleCase()

A Refactoring Tale