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There are two simple ways to get all files in a folder: I’ll show examples below, along with a few other scenarios, such as getting files from subfolders. Note: ‘directory’ and ‘folder’ mean the same thing. I use these terms interchangeably. Get all files with Directory.GetFiles() Directory.GetFiles() returns all file paths from the top-level folder … Read more
You can use String.Join() to convert a collection of items to a string with a separator (such as a comma). Here’s an example of using String.Join() to convert a List of strings to a comma-separated string: This results in the following comma-separated string: String.Join() can be used on wide variety of input: I’ll show a … Read more
The simplest way to convert an array to a list is with the ToList() Linq method: This outputs the following: Besides using ToList(), you can also use the list constructor or AddRange(). Before I show those, I’ll explain why you’d want to use these special methods instead of just adding items individually to a new … Read more
The simplest way to convert a list to an array is to use the List.ToArray() method: This outputs the following: Internally, the List<T> class stores elements in a dynamically sized array (it resizes when necessary). So under the hood, List.ToArray() uses Array.Copy() to copy the list’s internal array to a new array. This is very … Read more
System.Text.Json doesn’t support serializing / deserializing multidimensional arrays. When you try, it throws an exception like this – System.NotSupportedException: The type ‘System.Int[,] is not supported. You have three options: In this article, I’ll show an example of how to create a custom JsonConverter that handles multidimensional arrays. In this example, I’ll specifically show how to … Read more
Input formatters are used to deserialize the request body to a model object (which is then passed into an action method). There are built-in input formatters for handling JSON and XML. You can add your own input formatter when you want to customize request body deserialization. There are two scenarios where a custom InputFormatter would … Read more
When you’re parsing CSV with CsvHelper and there’s no header row, you have to configure it to map by field position. I’ll show how to do that. At the end, I’ll show the alternative approach of manually parsing in this scenario. Consider the following CSV data without a header row: Normally, CsvHelper maps fields to … Read more
In this article, I’ll show how to parse a CSV file manually and with a parser library (CsvHelper). Let’s say you have the following CSV file: To manually parse this, read the file line by line and split each line with a comma. This gives you a string array containing the fields that you can … Read more
In this article, I’ll explain the Zig Zag Sequence algorithm problem on HackerRank. Problem statement: You’re given an integer array with an odd number of elements (ex: [5, 2, 3, 1, 4]). You need to re-arrange the elements so they’re in a zig zag sequence, which means: Here’s a diagram to help you visualize what … Read more
There are two ways to get request headers: When a request comes in, the framework loads request headers into the Request.Headers dictionary. You can use this just like any other dictionary. Here’s an example of using TryGetValue() to check if a request header exists and get its value: Note: To just check if a header … Read more
The top-level statements feature makes the Main() method implicit. This feature was added in C# 9 (.NET 5) with the purpose of decluttering a project’s entry point. Here’s what a console app looks like using a top-level statement: The compiler generates the Main() method implicitly from the top-level statements. The code above is functionally equivalent … Read more
The simplest way to save a list of strings to a file is to use File.WriteAllLines(). This creates (or overwrites) the file and writes each string on a new line. The resulting file looks like this: Note: Showing non-printable newline characters \r\n for clarity. Specifying the separator character What if you want to separate each … Read more
In this article, I’ll explain how to solve the Mark and Toys algorithm problem on HackerRank. Problem statement: Given a fixed budget and a list of item prices. What is the max number of items you can purchase? You can only buy each item once. Note: This is the Mark and Toys problem from HackerRank. … Read more
Padding a 2D array on all sides means adding new rows on the top and bottom, new columns on the left and right, and then copying the original elements to the center of the padded array. It looks like this: There are two approaches for copying the elements. You can either copy individual items in … Read more
In a console app there are two ways to get commands: After getting a command, you have to parse it to figure out what code to execute. Typically commands have the following format: commandName -argumentName argumentValue. For example, take a look at this familiar git command: This is passing the command line arguments into the … Read more
Most of the time System.Text.Json will get you want you want. You can pass in options to control JSON serialization and deserialization to a certain extent. But sometimes you’ll run into scenarios where you need to customize how it handles a specific type. This is where JsonConverter comes in. You can customize serialization / deserialization … Read more
When you are using reflection to call a method, you may run into this exception: System.Reflection.TargetParameterCountException: Parameter count mismatch. This exception is straightforward – you aren’t passing in the correct number of parameters to MethodInfo.Invoke(). This article shows three different cases where you might run into this exception when using reflection. Using reflection to invoke … Read more
To create a custom exception, create a subclass of the Exception class, like this: Then throw it just like you would any other exception, like this: It’s a good idea to call the base constructor from your constructor and pass in your custom error message. If this exception is unhandled, or if you are logging … Read more
This article shows code for converting a hex string to a byte array, unit tests, and a speed comparison. First, this diagram shows the algorithm for converting a hex string to a byte array. To convert a hex string to a byte array, you need to loop through the hex string and convert two characters … Read more
If I want to change the behavior of a method from the outside, I can pass in a function pointer. This approach exists in every language, and is one way to implement the Strategy Pattern. In C#, function pointers are referred to as delegates, and the two most common ones are Action and Func. The … Read more
The Large Class code smells refers to a class that has too many responsibilities. It’s doing too much. Ideally a class should only have one responsibility (Single Responsibility Principle). Code Smell: Large Class Definition: A class has too many responsibilities. Solution: Large Class code smell example Here’s an example of the Large Class code smell … Read more
In this article, I’ll explain how to solve the Sock Merchant algorithm problem on HackerRank. Problem statement: You’re given an integer array and need to count the number of pairs of matching integers. The integers will be between 1 and 100. For example, [3,1,3] has one matching pair (the 3s match). Approach First, we know … Read more
One day I decided to challenge myself by trying to implement multithreaded quicksort. I wanted to see how it would compare to the built-in Array.Sort() method. I came up with two algorithms that were 2-4x faster than Array.Sort(): After continuing to tinker, in attempts to further optimize, I came across the AsParallel().OrderBy() method (PLINQ). After … Read more
Problem When you try to pass in an attribute constructor parameter to a custom attribute, you get one of the following compiler errors: Error CS0181 Attribute constructor parameter has type ‘Color’ which is not a valid attribute parameter type Error CS0655 ‘Color’ is not a valid named attribute argument because it is not a valid … Read more