I’ve been very quiet recently. (I’m trying to not be so loud, Scott. ) You see, I’ve been writing a lot of ASP.Net code for a site I’m working on. And, to be honest, I’ve been having a lot of trouble. The source code for .Net has been very helpful, and I’ve learnt a lot [...]

Have you wondered if and when you should use the new LINQ features in .Net 3.5? Like, where should I put a new extension method? Should I use Func<T> or a custom delegate? How do I best implement a mix-in (extension methods on an interface)? Well, Mircea Trofin has just published a new draft of [...]

While surfing around tonight, I came across ExtensionMethod.net, a database of useful Extension Methods for C# 3.0 and VB 9. I thought it might be useful, so I added a few of my own extension methods. IComparable<T>.LessThan int.Times int.To There aren’t many there yet, but there are one or two on there from Scott Guthrie. [...]

Visual Studio 2008 has lots of goodies in it, like LINQ syntax, CSS editing, and testing tools. There’s a lesser-known feature which I really appreciate though – the “Remove and Sort Usings” command in the C# editor. You activate the command by placing your cursor over the using statements and clicking on the right mouse-button.

I was recently reading Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers’ Guide, Second Edition, and came across this piece of example Ruby code: [1,3,5,7].inject(0) {|sum, element| sum+element} -> 16 [1,3,5,7].inject(1) {|product, element| product*element} -> 105 Inject is a method which acts on an array by aggregating or accumulating the values within that array. It loops through the [...]

Yesterday I thought I’d learn about the LinqDataSource in ASP.Net 3.5, and got an interesting surprise. The new LinqDataSource can also be used with a LINQ-to-SQL model to perform updates. You simply add the DataSource to your page, set the table name, and set EnableUpdate to true. Then, using a standard DataControl, you can make [...]

When learning LINQ-to-SQL, it’s not immediately obvious how to do an update. Querying is easy, and there are methods for inserting and deleting. Updating usually occurs by modifying an object already known to the DataContext and then calling SubmitChanges on the context. var product = (from p in dataContext.Products where p.ProductID == 1 select p).Single(); [...]

Until recently I thought this was a well-known feature. After demonstrating it a few times, I found out it wasn’t. A long time ago, in an cubicle far, far away, someone created the .Net Framework. To cut a long story short, they simultaneously produced guidelines for creating Exception classes, which you should always use or [...]

Quick tip: If you want to see the SQL generated by LINQ to SQL for a query or command, simply set the Log property of your generated DataContext class to an instance of a TextReader. If this is your code: using System; using System.Linq; using System.Data.Linq; namespace LINQtoSQLConsole { class Program { static void Main(string[] [...]

When you started using LINQ, did you think it looked like SQL? I did. The more I learned LINQ, the more I realized it wasn’t anything like SQL. Take grouping, for example. Because LINQ has a group by statement, and it looks like SQL, I assumed that the syntax for grouping in LINQ would be [...]