5 Useful Visual Studio C# Snippets

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When working on a given project I always create Visual Studio snippets for repetitive tasks to save time and avoid mistakes. Of course each project has some specific requirements and therefore it’s not always the same code that is repeated.

The best snippets are the ones you would create yourself. But here are a few that I find are pretty generic and saved me sometime and hope you will find useful as well.

EventHandler

This snippet will create a generic event handler method. It’s pretty useful when working with ASP.Net controls and you don’t like to switch to the design view to then double click or go into properties of an element to generate the event handler by fear that the designer would mess something up.

Shortcut: evh

Sample Result:

void btnSubmit_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
}

Customization:

• The name of the method
• The EventArgs type

OnEvent

This one is a no brainer, so I use it to save time and avoid forgetting to check if the event is null before raising it.

Shortcut: onevt

Sample Result:

protected void OnEvent(EventArgs args)
{
    if (myEvent != null)
    {
        myEvent(this, args);
    }
}

Customization:

• The name of the method
• The EventArgs type
• The Event to raise

Singleton Class

We all need a singleton class  at one point or another in most of our projects. I think it’s the most used software pattern and so it deservers it’s own snippet. Oh, it’s thread safe

The implementation used is available here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998558.aspx

Shortcut: snglt

Sample Result:

using System;

public sealed class Singleton
{
   private static volatile Singleton instance;
   private static object syncRoot = new Object();

   private Singleton() {}

   public static Singleton Instance
   {
      get
      {
         if (instance == null)
         {
            lock (syncRoot)
            {
               if (instance == null)
                  instance = new Singleton();
            }
         }

         return instance;
      }
   }
}

Customization:

• The class name

SqlDataReader with Stored Procedure

We generate most of our Data Access code but for custom business requirements we end up creating  specific stored procedures. So instead of copy/paste from another file I have created this snippet.

Shortcut: sqlproc

Sample Result:

using (SqlConnection sqlConnection = new SqlConnection(myConnectionString))
{

   using (SqlCommand sqlCommand = new SqlCommand("myStoredProcedure",sqlConnection))
   {

       sqlCommand.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;

       #region params
       //add your parameters here
       #endregion

       SqlDataReader dr = null;

       try
       {

           sqlCommand.Connection.Open();

           dr = sqlCommand.ExecuteReader();

           while (dr.Read())
           {
               //do your mapping here
           }

       }
       catch (SqlException)
       {
           //handle exception
       }
       finally
       {
           if (dr != null && !dr.IsClosed)
               dr.Close();
           if (sqlCommand.Connection.State != ConnectionState.Closed)
               sqlCommand.Connection.Close();
       }
   }

}

Customization:

• Connection string
• Stored Procedure name

Serialize/Deserialize an object from an XML string

I can never remember the correct syntax for doing this and I am always looking at an other project to copy/paste this code so I ended up creating a snippet for it too.

Shortcut: serial

Sample Result:

public static List<MenuGroup> Deserialize(string strXml)
{
   XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List<MenuGroup>));

   StringReader reader = new StringReader(strXml);

   return (List<MenuGroup>)serializer.Deserialize(reader);

}

public static string Serialize(List<MenuGroup> items)
{
    XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List<MenuGroup>));

    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

    StringWriter writer = new StringWriter(sb);
    serializer.Serialize(writer, items);

    return sb.ToString();
}

Customization:

• Type to Serialize

Download the snippets.

To add this snippets to Visual Studio then Tools –> Code Snippets Manager … select Import… and browse to where you extracted the downloaded file.

Happy coding!

Hatim

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