Comparing the Timer Classes in .NET

A few days ago, I ran into some issues with the timer that I was using in my Windows Service. As it turns out, not all timers in .NET are created equal. This article was able to give me some valuable insight that I was able to use to solve my problem.

Extension Methods

This is the first in a series of posts that I will use to demonstrate some of the cool new features of the new C# 3.0 specification and Visual Studio 2008.

If you asked me, the two coolest new features of C# 3.0 are LINQ and Extension Methods. There have been a ton of articles demonstrating the power of LINQ, so I'll focus my first post on Extension Methods.

So what exactly is an extension method? In as few words as possible, it's a language feature that allows a developer to add new methods to existing types. And I see quite a bit of potential with this feature. For example, adding a SaveAsJpeg() method to the sealed System.Drawing.Bitmap class.

Just a little background so we can begin. An extension method must be declared in a static class, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

For demonstration purposes, let's create a static class called StringExtenstions that adds a Reverse() method to the string type.

public static class StringExtentions
{
public static string Reverse(this string str)
{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

// Reverse the string
for (int i = str.Length - 1; i >= 0; i--)
{
sb.Append(str[i]);
}

return sb.ToString();
}
}


And believe it or not, that's it. You have just added a Reverse() method to all string types within your assembly. And how do you use it? Good question. Just like you would had the String class always had a Reverse() method.

string myString = "This is a test";
string reversed = myString.Reverse();


It should be noted that unlike regular methods, extension methods cannot access private members of the class that they are extending.

Stay tuned for more C# 3.0 goodness.

Asynchronous Pages in ASP.NET

In my opinion, one of the most unappreciated enhancements to ASP.NET 2.0 is the ease in which one can design their code to run asynchronously. In my experience, developers have blown off the idea in the beginning because of not realizing the true potential of asynchronous development in a web application. This MSDN article goes into details about why asynchronous programming is important to your ASP.NET applications, and provides code samples to help you understand.

C# 3.0: An Introduction

This article hopes to bring readers up to speed on some of the changes we can look forward to in the C# 3.0 specification. Some of the new features include:

• Object Initialization
• Type Inferences
• Anonymous Types
• Lambda Expressions
• Extension Methods
• Queries (LINQ)
• Expression Trees

Custom Iterators

Bill Wagner has written a great article on custom iterators that I highly recommend reading. He takes you through a series of problems in great detail to help explain better ways of iterating through collections. A Word document version of the article is also available here and his blog can be found here.