5 Useful Visual Studio C# Snippets – Part 2

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I initially published 5 Visual Studio c# Snippets yesterday and it got a lot of attention and had some positive feedback, so this is a follow up that I hope would be as helpful as the first one.

Reading an embedded resource as a stream

Specially when sending patches to customers, sometimes I need to embed an XML file that would contain some data that needs to be imported to the database in a compiled exe or dll to simplify the process for them. So I ended up creating a snippet on how to read an embedded resource

Shortcut: rembed

Sample Result:

Stream rulesReader = typeof(MyObject).Assembly.GetManifestResourceStream(

          typeof(MyObject), "Resources.AttestationContratWorkflow.rules");

Customization:

• The type of the object to get the assembly from
• The name of the embedded resource

ViewState property

Even though I avoid using  the viewstate as much as I can to keep the size of the page small but sometimes you really need to.

Shortcut: vstate

Sample Result:

public string Title
{
    get
    {
        if (ViewState["Title"] == null)
            return "My Title";

        return (string)ViewState["Title"];
    }
    set
    {
        ViewState["Title"] = value;
    }
}

Customization:

• The type of the property
• The name of the property
• The default return value

Null argument validation

I would say this is one of the basic best practices to have and to stick to. My Eiffel professor would be so proud of me

Shortcut: nparam

Sample Result:

if (context == null)
{
   throw new ArgumentNullException("context ");
}

Customization:

• The name of the parameter

Info Message Box

This snippets shows an Information Message box.

Shortcut: ibox

Sample Result:

MessageBox.Show(this, "My Information Message", "Information...", MessageBoxButtons.OK,

                 MessageBoxIcon.Information);

Customization:

• The message

Error Message Box

Same as the previous snippet but shows an error message instead

Shortcut: ebox

Sample Result:

MessageBox.Show(this, "My Error Message", "Error...", MessageBoxButtons.OK, 

                 MessageBoxIcon.Error);

Customization:

• The message

Download the snippets

Hope  this helps!

Hatim

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