string stuff = objectVariable as string;

// Get variable from session
string myId = Session["objectKey"] as string;

// Save Id for later
Session["objectKey"] = theIdToSave;

// This will return: {Name = "Int32" FullName = "System.Int32"}    
Session["Test"].GetType();

string someText = String.Format("This is a line1.{0} This is line 2.", @"\n");

string someText = String.Format("This is a line1.{0} This is line 2.", Environment.NewLine);

I've been looking through a lot of "hand me down code" (code that was written awhile ago by someone else) that did a lot of File IO. The code works well, but at times its hard to read the really long file paths that they're using. As you know, file paths in C# have to be escaped, otherwise the compiler will think that you're trying to escape a character. So a double backslash actually equates to a single backslash when compiled. This can be cleaned up a bit. Read on brethern...

This is how the file paths look now:

// Current File Paths
string path = "c:\\directory\\folder1\\folder2\\folder3\\somefile.txt";

To make this cleaner, use the "@" symbol at the beginning of the string literal and it will escape the characters for you.

// New File Path
string path = @"c:\directory\folder1\folder2\folder3\somefile.txt";

Simple, but a lot of programmers dont know this little time saver.

NOTE: using the @ symbol when you need to included \t or \r, \n will not work. It will interepret the characters just as they are "\n" will print on the screen as "\n" not the new line that you're probably expecting.

1. Go to the project properties and select the Build Tab.
2. Select "All" under Treat Warnings as Errors
   

csc.exe /warnaserror

public string GetCurrentPageFileName()
{
   return new System.IO.FileInfo(Request.PhysicalPath).Name;
}

I've also created a base page class in the past to hold these types of methods (below).

/// <summary>
/// Base Page class
/// </summary>
public abstract class BasePage : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    protected string GetCurrentPageFileName()
    {
        return new System.IO.FileInfo(Request.PhysicalPath).Name;
    }
}

Sometimes there are methods in code that my development department knows are robust. There are no bugs in the code. This might be helper methods that have been tested time and time again. Therefore we know we dont need to debug these methods 99% of the time. To alleviate the pain of stepping through unnecessary lines of code accidentally you can inform the debugger that it is not suppossed to access a block of code. To do this add the DebuggerHidden Attribue. You cannot set a break point in this block of code when this attribute is present.

[DebuggerHidden]
void DoSomething()
{
// Do Something
}

*Note: This is only valid on constructors, methods, properties, and indexers only.

As of recently I've had a few requests for how I handle a string representation of an Enumeration in a conditional switch. If you pass in a string into the switch statement without parsing the enumeration .NET will complain about a constant value being required. Here's how to write switch statement with a string respresentation of the Enumeration. You might find this useful when you store a string value of the enumeration in a data source such as a DB or XML File and you need to get its Enumeration value through code.

A lot of the time developers will get an error when they first attempt to peform a conditional switch without knowing how to do it. The error they get is "a constant value is required". Here's how to actually implement it. :)

public enum Product
{
    Word,
    Outlook,
    Excel
}

public void Process(string productName)
{
    switch ((Product)Enum.Parse(typeof(Product), productName.ToString()))
    {
        case Product.Excel:
        // Do something
            break;
        case Product.Outlook:
            // Do Something
            break;
        case Product.Word:
            // Do something
            break;            
    }        
}