One of the code smells that particularly bothers me (though I often find myself doing it anyhow) is when I defensively program against nulls in C# (though could be any other language). That is, I do something like the following var rec = getRecord(..); if (rec != null) { var rec1 = getAnotherRecord(..); if (rec1 != null) { rec2 = getAThridRecord(..); if (rec2 != null)... The code gets ugly quick and the nesting does not help the readability, and if anything, hurts it. Today, while using a daily build of Resharper7, I noticed that when I asked resharper to do the null check for me, instead of doing the above, it did the following: var rec = getRecord(..); Debug.Assert(rec != null,"rec != … Continue Reading
Building a Simple Window Service Application in Visual Studio 2010 That Runs, Sleeps and Stops
March 26, 2012 By 1 Comment
Introduction The goal is to create a simple Service in Windows 7 (or other similar OS’s) with Visual Studio 2010 that simply starts, sleeps for 15 seconds, then stops. I realize this is not that useful, but basically, it covers the case of building a service that actually does something and when finished stops. In my personal case, my thread has a while(true) loop which keeps looking for new work and only completes when certain conditions are met (like a fatal error that is non recoverable). Microsoft has given us a pretty good set of docs and walk through. You can find them all here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/y817hyb6.aspx The Steps Create a new Visual Studio Project of type “Windows … Continue Reading
Test First Development Walk Through with Visual Studio 2011 Preview
March 18, 2012 By 1 Comment
Introduction Many of us know we should be using test first development, however it is hard to break old habits. I have to admit, I started to solve this particular problem I’m going to use an an example first without test first, then realized what a pickle I was going to be in proving to myself it worked. So, I thought, why not blog my experience as I do it. Using Visual Studio unit testing makes this pretty easy. The Problem I’m currently building a multithreaded email processor and part of that process is I have to figure out, for any given use whether they are supposed to have there email server checked. So, the way I look at it, I need a method that takes in the following parameter. … Continue Reading
Using The DataContext In EntityFramework To Retrieve Nested Objects
November 27, 2011 By 2 Comments
I’m always somewhat amazed when I read something from documentation that is not straight forward and it actually works. So amazed and excited that I often feel the need to blog about it. So, here is the problem. I created a CodeFirst implementation of EntityFramework in Visual Studio and created a simple hierarchy in my data model. That is, without showing all the code, here is what I have: public class Person{ [Key] [DatabaseGeneratedAttribute(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)] public int Id { get; set; } public virtual List<EmailAddressInfo> EmailAddressInfoList { get; set; } ..}public class EmailAddressInfo{ [Key] [DatabaseGeneratedAttribute(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)] public … Continue Reading
