Simon Reynolds - SimonReynolds.ie (Page 5)

JavaScript

Javascript and weakly defined types

Javascript is a weakly typed language, a variable can be equal to another if they have the same value even if they are different types. As a result, Javascript has two equality operators; == checks if the values of the compared objects are equal === checks if the values and types of

Browser Link

window.onbeforeunload not running

After recently upgrading to Visual Studio 2013 I noticed that a page which uses the window.onbeforeunload event wasn't calling the method I wrote. Checking the chrome console I was seeing this instead of the function I had written. The culprit is Browser Link, a technology introduced in

JavaScript

Checking on client side if form has been modified

I'm editing a record in a web application and I accidentally click on something I shouldn't have. The page navigates away and when I hit back I see that all my changes have been lost. This still happens with an almost disturbing level of regularity, I

C#

Quick selection of random element in collection

Wouldn't advise this one in production code but if during testing you need to pull a random element from a pool of known good values you can quickly sort the pool by using array.OrderBy(arrayElement => Guid.NewGuid()); To see it in action just try something along

C#

Passing a DateTime parameter to an MVC Action

If you need to pass a date to an MVC action method you should include it in a form and pass back the entire form as a single class. If for some reason this can't be done and you have a method with a signature similar to public

C#

Validating file names for writing to disk

Suppose you have a system where a user can upload a file and they can specify the name of the file, or where a file is automatically generated and the name is created based on certain properties. For instance, suppose a file is created and it's name will

C#

Working with paths in C#

Time and time again when working with code that involves operations with the file system a developer may write something like var path = @"C:\Temp"; var file = @"file.txt"; var pathToFile = path + "\\" + file; // pathToFile = "C:\\Temp\\file.txt" In an ideal world

C#

Getting the name of a property as a string

EDIT Everything below is completely unnecessary in C#6, just use the nameof operator So instead of using any of the shenanigans and hacks below, simply write SelectList list = new SelectList(items, nameof(Id), nameof(Text)); Simples. Original article below for C#5 and under... There are many times when

C#

Parsing strings to enums

Not something that's needed very often but sometimes we can need to get an enum value from a string, perhaps a value returned from an API you have no control over. In general, parsing a string to an enum can be done using either (EnumType)Enum.Parse(typeof(