Cale Dunlap » extension methods http://www.caledunlap.com Programmer and hobbyist game developer Fri, 20 Aug 2010 08:13:23 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Helpful Extension Methods to the System.String Class in C# http://www.caledunlap.com/2009/10/helpful-extension-methods-to-the-system-string-class-in-c/ http://www.caledunlap.com/2009/10/helpful-extension-methods-to-the-system-string-class-in-c/#comments Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:20:03 +0000 Cale http://caledunlap.com/blog/2009/10/helpful-extension-methods-to-the-system-string-class-in-c/ I’ve been doing a decent amount of string manipulation lately and decided to combine that with my newfound knowledge about .NET extension methods. If you don’t know what extension methods are, they’re basically a way to extend a class without needing the source code to that particular class–hence why I can extend the System.String type by simply writing another class. The key is with the parameters of your methods. Here’s the basic gist of it:

public static {Your Return Type} {Your Method Name} ( this {Type/Class you want to extend} {Parameter Name} )
{
     /* Your method body */
}

 

So the key here is the “this” keyword before the type identifier in the parameter list of the method.

I’ve wrapped all of my extension methods into a single class simply called “ExtensionMethods” and added it to my project. The namespace doesn’t matter, so I haven’t included it in this example. You can either use the global namespace (though I don’t recommend it) or just create your own namespace called whatever you want.

Without further adue, here’s the code:

public static class ExtensionMethods
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Includes the trailing path delimiter.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="InputPath">The input path.</param>
    /// <returns>The input path including a trailing path delimiter if it doesn't have one</returns>
    public static string IncludeTrailingPathDelimiter(this string InputPath)
    {
        if (!InputPath.EndsWith(Path.DirectorySeparatorChar.ToString()) &&
            !InputPath.EndsWith(Path.AltDirectorySeparatorChar.ToString()))
            return InputPath + Path.DirectorySeparatorChar;
        return InputPath;
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Asserts the trailing path delimiter.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="InputPath">The input path.</param>
    public static void AssertTrailingPathDelimiter(this string InputPath)
    {
        InputPath = InputPath.IncludeTrailingPathDelimiter();
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Trims the extension from a file name.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="InputFile">The input file.</param>
    public static void TrimExtension(this string InputFile)
    {
        int start, count;
        if ((start = InputFile.LastIndexOf(".")) > 0)
        {
            count = InputFile.Length – start;
            InputFile = InputFile.Remove(start, count);
        }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Gets a file extension of a filename.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="InputFile">The input file.</param>
    /// <returns>The file extension</returns>
    public static string FileExtension(this string InputFile)
    {
        int start, count;
        if ((start = InputFile.LastIndexOf(".")) > 0)
        {
            count = InputFile.Length – start;
            return InputFile.Substring(start, count);
        }
        return string.Empty;
    }

}

 

Now whenever you use a System.String object, you’ll be able to simply call these methods as if they were part of the System.String class. IE: string MyFileExtension = MyFilePath.FileExtension();

I’m sure I’ll add on to this as I go along.

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