Most useful .NET class developers tend to invent rather than reuse

Question

I recently read this post by Phil Haack ( The Most Useful .NET Classes, Class Developers Tend to Reuse, Not Reuse ) from last year, and thought I would see if anyone has any additions to the list.

Answer 1

People tend to use the following, which is ugly and associated with failure:

string path = basePath + "\\" + fileName; 

Better and safer:

 string path = Path.Combine(basePath, fileName); 

I also saw how people write their own method for reading all bytes from a file. It is very convenient:

 byte[] fileData = File.ReadAllBytes(path); // use path from Path.Combine 

As TheXenocide noted, the same goes for File.ReadAllText() and File.ReadAllLines()

Answer 2

String.IsNullOrEmpty()

Answer 3

 Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(string path) 

Returns the file name of the specified path string without extension.

 Path.GetTempFileName() 

Creates the same name, zero byte temporary file on disk and returns the full path to this file.

Answer 4

Class System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch .

Answer 5

String.Format.

How many times have i seen

 return "£" & iSomeValue 

but not

 return String.Format ("{0:c}", iSomeValue) 

or people adding percent signs are such things.

Answer 6

Enum.Parse ()

Answer 7

Trying to find out where My documents are located on the user's computer. Just use the following:

 string directory = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.MyDocuments); 

Answer 8

I needed to download some files recently in a windows application. I found the DownloadFile method for the WebClient object:

  WebClient wc = new WebClient(); wc.DownloadFile(sourceURLAddress, destFileName); 

Answer 9

String.Join () (however, almost everyone knows about string.Split and seems to use it every chance they get ...)

Answer 10

Hard coding a / to directory manipulation string compared to using:

 IO.Path.DirectorySeparatorChar 

Answer 11

The StringBuilder class and especially the AppendFormat method.

PS: If you are looking for a measure of the performance of string operations: StringBuilder vs. String / Fast String Operations with .NET 2.0

Answer 12

 Environment.NewLine 

Answer 13

Instead of generating the file name with Guid, just use:

 Path.GetRandomFileName() 

Answer 14

Many of the new Linq features seem rather unknown:

Any<T>() & All<T>()

 if( myCollection.Any( x => x.IsSomething ) ) //... bool allValid = myCollection.All( x => x.IsValid ); 

ToList<T>(), ToArray<T>(), ToDictionary<T>()

 var newDict = myCollection.ToDictionary( x => x.Name, x => x.Value ); 

First<T>(), FirstOrDefault<T>()

 return dbAccessor.GetFromTable( id ). FirstOrDefault(); 

Where<T>()

 //instead of foreach( Type item in myCollection ) if( item.IsValid ) //do stuff //you can also do foreach( var item in myCollection.Where( x => x.IsValid ) ) //do stuff //note only a simple sample - the logic could be a lot more complex 

All very useful features that can be used outside of Linq syntax.

Answer 15

• Using the DebuggerDisplay attribute instead of ToString () to simplify debugging.
• Enumerable.Range
• Tuples by FSharp.Core!

Answer 16

System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex

Answer 17

input.StartsWith("stuff") instead of Regex.IsMatch(input, @"^stuff")

Answer 18

See Hidden .NET Base Class Library Classes

Answer 19

For everything that lurks in the Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace, TextFieldParser is actually a very nice csv parser. I see that many people either roll back their own (badly) or use something like a beautiful Fast CSV library on Code Plex, without even knowing that they are already baked within the framework.

Answer 20

File.

 using System.IO; File.Exists(FileNamePath) Directory.Exists(strDirPath) File.Move(currentLocation, newLocation); File.Delete(fileToDelete); Directory.CreateDirectory(directory) System.IO.FileStream file = System.IO.File.Create(fullFilePath); 

Answer 21

System.IO.File.ReadAllText versus writing logic using StreamReader for small files.

System.IO.File.WriteAllText versus writing logic using StreamWriter for small files.

Answer 22

It seems like many people like going through an XML file manually to find something, rather than using XPathNaviagator.

Answer 23

Most people forget that Directory.CreateDirectory () gracefully degrades if the folder already exists, and wrap it with a meaningless call to if (! Directory.Exists (....)).

Answer 24

myString.Equals (anotherString)

and options, including culture-specific.

I am sure that at least 50% of the developers write something like: if (s == "id") {...}

Answer 25

Path.Append is always forgotten in what I saw.