C# – Get argument names automatically

You can use the CallerArgumentExpression attribute to automatically get the name of an argument being passed into a method: Note: CallerArgumentExpression was added in .NET 6. Here’s an example to show what CallerArgumentExpression does: Calling this method outputs the following: You use the CallerArgumentExpression attribute with a default string parameter (i.e. string argumentName = null). … Read more

C# – How to use JsonExtensionData

Use the JsonExtensionData attribute (in System.Text.Json) to deserialize properties that aren’t part of the class. Without this, JSON fields that don’t match a property are simply ignored and the returned object will have null properties. Here’s an example of adding this attribute to a dictionary property: Now when you deserialize JSON to this Person class, … Read more

C# – Adding dynamic parameters with Dapper

The simplest way to add dynamic parameters when executing queries with Dapper is by passing in Dictionary<string, object>, like this: Read more about how to add items to a dictionary. You can also add dynamic parameter by using the DynamicParameters class. You can use whichever approach is simplest in the given scenario. In this article, … Read more

C# – Map query results to multiple objects with Dapper

When you’re querying joined tables, you can map each row to multiple objects by using the multi mapping feature in Dapper. To multi map, you have to provide Dapper with the following: In this article, I’ll show examples of multi mapping. Note: If you don’t specify the split column, it’ll use the default of “Id”. … Read more

C# – How to send a file with HttpClient

In order to send a file in a request with HttpClient, add the file into a MultipartFormDataContent object, and send this object as the request content. Here’s an example: This sends the following multipart/form-data POST request: In this article, I’ll explain a few details about MultipartFormDataContent, and show a few other file-sending scenarios. MultipartFormDataContent Add() … Read more

C# – Sending query strings with HttpClient

Query strings start with ‘?’ and have one or more key-value pairs separated by ‘&’. All characters except a-z, A-Z, 0-9 have to be encoded, including Unicode characters. When you use HttpClient, it automatically encodes the URI for you (internally, it delegates this task to the Uri class). This means when you include a query … Read more

C# – Add or overwrite a value in ConcurrentDictionary

The simplest way to add or overwrite a value in a ConcurrentDictionary is to use the indexer: If the key doesn’t exist, this adds it. If the key exists, this overwrites it. The indexer is thread-safe. The indexer is the simplest way to unconditionally add / overwrite a value. Sometimes you’ll want to use other … Read more

C# – Convert a list to a dictionary

The simplest way to convert a list to a dictionary is to use the Linq ToDictionary() method: This loops through the list and uses the key/element selector lambdas you passed in to build the dictionary. In this article, I’ll go into details about how to use ToDictionary() and show how to deal with duplicate keys. … Read more

Complex DataBinding accepts as a data source either an IList or an IListSource

If you try to set a list control’s DataSource to a type it can’t handle, then you’ll get the following exception: System.ArgumentException: Complex DataBinding accepts as a data source either an IList or an IListSource. (Parameter ‘value’)at System.Windows.Forms.ListControl.set_DataSource(Object value) Note: This applies to all controls that subclass ListControl, such as ComboBox and ListBox. This is … Read more

System.Text.Json – How to serialize non-public properties

By default, System.Text.Json.JsonSerializer only serializes public properties. If you want to serialize non-public properties, you have two options: In this article, I’ll show examples of both approaches for handling non-public properties. Updated 2022-02-22 to explain the new JsonInclude attribute added in .NET 5. Write a custom JSON converter to serialize non-public properties When the built-in … Read more

Deserializing JSON that contains an embedded JSON string

In this article, I’ll show an example of code that handles deserializing JSON that contains an embedded JSON string. I’ll refer to this as a JSON envelope. The reason to refer to this as an envelope is because it’s similar to how you send paper mail through the post office. You put a letter (the … Read more

C# – Parsing commands and arguments in a console app

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

How to generate XML documentation and include it in a nuget package

XML documentation comments serve two purposes: In this article I’ll show how to automatically generate an XML documentation file and how to include it in a nuget package. 1 – Write the XML documentation comments in your code I have a method called MergeInPlace() (which merges two dictionaries in-place). To explain what this is doing … Read more

C# – Merge two dictionaries in-place

When you merge two dictionaries, you can either merge them in-place, or create a new dictionary and copy the values over to it. The following extension method does an in-place merge of two dictionaries. It loops through items in the right dictionary, adding them to the left dictionary. When duplicate keys exist, it’s keeping the … Read more

C# – Hex string to byte array

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

System.Text.Json can’t serialize Dictionary unless it has a string key

Before .NET 5, the built-in JSON serializer (System.Text.Json) couldn’t handle serializing a dictionary unless it had a string key. Here’s an example running in .NET Core 3.1 to show the problem. This is initializing a dictionary with values and then attempting to serialize it. This results in exception: System.NotSupportedException: The collection type ‘System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2[System.Int32,System.String]’ is not … Read more

C# – How to check if a type has a default constructor

A default constructor is a constructor that doesn’t have parameters. Therefore, to check if a type has a default constructor, you can use reflection to loop through the constructors and see if there are any with no parameters, like this: In this article I’ll show an example of loading types that implement a specific interface … Read more

C# – Get all classes that implement interface

You can use reflection to get all classes in the current assembly that implement a specific interface. Here’s how: To create instances of these types, loop through them and use Activator.CreateInstance(), like so: Example – Auto-wire a command routing table Let’s say we want to build a command routing table. We have commands and want … Read more

C# – Case insensitive dictionary

Dictionaries with string keys are case sensitive by default. If you want a case-insensitive dictionary, use the Dictionary constructor that takes a string comparison option and pass in StringComparer.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase, like this: Note: There are other case-insensitive options you can pick from, such as OrdinalIgnoreCase. Example I have a table that maps users to devices. The … Read more

KeyNotFoundException: The given key was not present in the dictionary

Problem The following exception is thrown when you try to get a value from a dictionary using a key that doesn’t exist in the dictionary: KeyNotFoundException: ‘The given key was not present in the dictionary.’ Consider the following the example of initializing a dictionary with a few key/value pairs, and then trying to access non-existent … Read more