DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by redcap

Sending email using a gmail account in C#

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:27:51 GMT

Sending emails using your gmail account is very simple in C#/VB.NET using .NET framework 2.0+. The below code snippet shows how.

Find matching items from a List - simple example of VB.NET 2008 lambda

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:37:57 GMT

Here is a very simple example showing how to find all matching items from a generic List(of T) using lambda functions in VB.NET.

Redirecting the console output to a stream

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:40:15 GMT

Shows how we can capture Console output and redirect it to a file.

Fastest way of copying bytes in C#

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:24:35 GMT

If you ever have come across having to copy a block of bytes from an array to another location, the fastest method I found in .NET framework is using the System.Buffer.BlockCopy()

Expand short URLs of tinyurl, bit.ly, tr.im etc

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:50:19 GMT

Popularity of services like twitter and other social networking sites have resulted in an exponential growth in the number of URL shortening services. bit.ly, tr.im are just few of the example. In this post I'll show how we can programmatically discover the hidden URL behind the shortened one.

Creating global hotkeys using managed Win API

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:02:32 GMT

.NET framework does not by default provide classes/methods for creating global hotkeys in our .NET applications. A hotkey can be defined as a particular key combination pressing of which triggers a event in our application even if user is not actively working on our app. For achieving this, we'll have to call into win32 api functions. Though .NET framework makes this work relatively easy, still calling into managed dlls and wrapping them in .NET classes

Quick FTP file upload in .NET

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 09:59:00 GMT

Uploading files using FTP is quick and easy in .NET framework. Below is a simplest possible method to upload a local file to a FTP server. Example is in

If blocks and readable code

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:50:09 GMT

Writing readable code is as important as writing high performance working code. One of the things which can easily affect the readability of the code we write is improper structuring of if/else blocks.

Using Email instead of Username for logging in

Mon, 18 May 2009 18:55:54 GMT

The Login control does not by default allow to set whether to use username and password as the log in or email and password should be used. In this post I'll show how we can easily change this behavior and allow our members to use their email address while logging in.

Entity Framework vs NHibernate

Mon, 18 May 2009 16:47:50 GMT

I have worked with both Entity Framework (at work) and NHibernate (at private projects) for a while now, and I tought I would write a post about the differance between the two. They are both (kind of) Object Relational Mappers (ORM´s) and they were developed to solve the same problem, that is data access in a .NET application. Entity Framework is a product from Microsoft while NHibernate is a Open Source project.

The 'Always Valid Entity' is not a fallacy

Mon, 18 May 2009 15:59:29 GMT

Following Jeffrey Palermo's post on the fallacy of the always-valid entity, this article being to look at how an 'always-valid' entity may be implemented.

Where can I set target platform to .net 2.0 in vs2008

Sat, 16 May 2009 18:40:25 GMT

VS2008 allows to target multiple .NET versions (V3.5, V3.0 and V2.0). But where exactly to set it? The thing is that this setting is found at different

ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Release Candidate Now Available

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:01:18 GMT

Finally Scott Guthrie announced ASP.NET MVC 1.0 RC. Check it out.

Replacing the default view engine in MVC w/ Spark

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:16:15 GMT

DimeCast - Replacing the default view engine in MVC w/ Spark

Beginning Reflection.Emit, a basic example

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:55:49 GMT

The System.Reflection.Emit namespace provides us the tools required to generate .NET code on the fly. Especially the DynamicMethod class makes the job of creating small code snippet easier. In this post I'll show a simple example of dynamically creating a method which takes a string as its argument and returns a string "hi "prepended to it. First, we will create the DynamicMethod object specifying the argument list and the return type of the dynamic method. Next

Determining if a Type implements an interface

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:59:44 GMT

If we have an object of a type, we can easily check if that object implements a particular type by using is operator. However, we cannot use is operator if all we got is a type and we want to find whether that type implements a particular interface.

IoC libraries compared

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:01:06 GMT

A comparison of how to initialize various IoC libraries. Including AutoFac, Ninject, Spring.Net, StructureMap, Unity, and Windsor.

Failing tests as a reminder of unimplemented requirement

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:31:02 GMT

passing the Type System.String to a method where the method expects a Type which implements a particular interface ICommand should result in an error because the System.String does not certainly implements the interface ICommand. But does the method validate the input?

Sorting list<t> the easy way using lambda expressions

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:15:23 GMT

Introduction of lambda expressions in .NET 3.5 have simplified many operations. One of them is sorting List<t> of complex types. For example assume that we have a type named Person and it has a Name property among other properties. Now if we want to sort a list of List<Person> on the Name property, we just have to use a single li

How to debug crashes and hangs

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:12:16 GMT

At my job on the C# IDE QA team I've learned some useful things about debugging in Visual Studio, which I'd like to summarize in this post: Turning off "Enable just my code" Attaching the debugger using Tools | Attach To Process Selecting Managed, Native for mixed-mode debugging or Enable unmanaged code debugging Attaching to multiple processes Selecting processes and threads Breaking on first-chance exceptions using the Debug | Exceptions dialog Picking the right thread Loading symbols Viewing the call stack Saving the minidump file

Always explicitly detach explicitly attached event handlers

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:39:09 GMT

We extensively use events in our .net programs. Most of the times, it doesn't give you debugging worries. However in some cases, it can become an issue where your object containing event handler doesn't get garbage collected due to event raising object holding a reference to the listener object.

Visual Studio 2005 - Disabling the New Ctrl+Tab Menu « Collin Grady

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:47:16 GMT

One of the few things I disliked about Visual Studio 2005 is the new Ctrl+Tab menu they added, which works sort of like Alt-Tab in Windows, but is fairly useless in an IDE - it just slows down Ctrl+Tab operation by requiring you to release both Control and Tab each time you want to change documents, so you

Is it OK to not have explicit return statements in functions?

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:46:21 GMT

The value returned to the caller when there isn't any explicit return statement in the code in VB.NET is the default value for the return type of the function. Or in other words, the result will be as if you have returned nothing. For example, if you have following function in your code:

Sending email with jQuery and a web service

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 07:16:04 GMT

This article show to use jQuery to interact with an asmx web service. Utilizing jQuery the contact form can be submitted without postback and the values passed via JSON to the web service. You learn how to ceate a new service and add the service reference as well coding the jQuery to pass the data

Asp.net Web application Deployment : Simpler Approach

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 22:50:48 GMT

If you are copying files manually from Development to Testing and from Testing to Production Server(s) its a nightmare. I tried the setup project and it was time consuming to configure and make sure you have added all the related references for testing and production. Finally went to good old DOS command..