Useful Code Snippet: Web Property

Write WebControls much? Well, I do and I have a code snippet that I pretty much can't live without. It is used for creating ViewState backed properties. Here is the basic pattern I use when creating properties for my web controls:

public string Name
{
    get
    {
        object o = ViewState["Name"];
        return o == null ? String.Empty : (string)o;
    }
    set { ViewState["Name"] = value; }
}

Basically, you just want a property (in this case a string named "Name") and you want to store it in ViewState. And when the value is being retrieved, if it is not in ViewState, you want to retrieve some default value. This is a pattern that I repeat over and over in my controls. So I made a code snippet to make it easier.

I use the shortcut 'webprop'

webprop snippet

and it expands like this:

webprop expanded

To install, you just need to place the .snippet file (link to download below) in your 'My Snippets' folder which in windows vista is located at:

C:\Users\<UserName>\Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Code Snippets\Visual C#\My Code Snippets

or if you use Visual Studio 2008:

C:\Users\<UserName>\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Code Snippets\Visual C#\My Code Snippets

I hope this is helpful. It saves me a bunch of time.

Tuesday, 15 January 2008