design question about the use of constants and resource files

[gabriel]

Greetings,

I am working on a project and cannot choose the best way to achieve this :

I got a method which returns an error code like this : DISK_FULL or
PERMISSION_DENIED.

Those are constants defined in a class named "Constants" :

public static byte DISK_FULL = 1;
public static byte PERMISSION_DENIED = 2;

Now I have a resource file with keys like this :

DISK_FULL Sorry, your disk is full, should make some room.
PERMISSION_DENIED Sorry, bla bla.
But since they are constants, the keys are not retrieved (I try to
retrieve "1" for instance), of course.

I thought to design my resource file like this :

1 Sorry, your disk is full, should make some room.
2 bla bla

My dilema is that my file is not very human-readable that way :(
I then thought but I could make things like this :
public static string DISK_FULL = "DISK_FULL";
public static string PERMISSION_DENIED = "PERMISSION_DENIED";

And a resource file with keys like this :

DISK_FULL Sorry, your disk is full, should make some room.
PERMISSION_DENIED Sorry, bla bla.
But I find it useless to use strings here : bytes are shorter so faster
managed (yes this does not change everything, I know ;) )

My question : what do you do ??

phew, he finally asked the question ;)
I come from the java world so maybe I am missing here :)

Thank you for your patience

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

gabriel <sp**@yahoo.fr> wrote:

I am working on a project and cannot choose the best way to achieve this :

I got a method which returns an error code like this : DISK_FULL or
PERMISSION_DENIED.

Those are constants defined in a class named "Constants" :

public static byte DISK_FULL = 1;
public static byte PERMISSION_DENIED = 2;
Firstly, the .NET naming conventions would suggest DiskFull and
PermissionDenied. I've converted to using these conventions in my Java
code too, and they do make things much more readable.
Now I have a resource file with keys like this :

DISK_FULL Sorry, your disk is full, should make some room.
PERMISSION_DENIED Sorry, bla bla.
But since they are constants, the keys are not retrieved (I try to
retrieve "1" for instance), of course.

I thought to design my resource file like this :

1 Sorry, your disk is full, should make some room.
2 bla bla

My dilema is that my file is not very human-readable that way :(

The easy way of dealing with this is to use an enum. You can easily get
the name of an enum element, you get the speed of ints (or whatever -
although frankly as you'd only be passing a reference round, I think
your performance concern is misplaced), and you keep the human
readability of the file.

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too

[Javaman59]

If you can move to Visual Studio 2005, then you will find that the IDE
provides strong support for resources such as these.

It provides a graphical table where you enter your constant/string pairs...

DiskFull Your disk is full
PermissionsError There was a permissions error

It generates a class from this which provides a static "get" property for
each resource. The class is in the Properties namespace.

An example of using it...

MessageBox.Show(Properties.Resources.DiskFull);

.....displays the string "Your disk is full"

VS 2003 provides similar features, but they are somewhat hidden behind
localization. I haven't used them myself, but I think that with a little bit
of investigation will find what you need. Start in the Solution Explorer,
right-click the project, and select "Add Component" then "Add Assembly
Resource File", and take it from there.

You can also use a HashTable

enum ErrorCodes
{
DiskFull,
PermissionsError
}

Hashtable errorTable = new Hashtable();

// Initialize the hash table
errorTable.Add(ErrorCodes.DiskFull, "Your disk is full");
errorTable.Add(ErrorCodes.PermissionsError, "Permissions error");

// Use an item from the hash table
MessageBox.Show(errorTable[DiskFull].ToString());

Regards,

Javaman

[Rakesh Rajan]

Hi,

As Jon mentioned, I use enums.

You might want to check out a simple method I use for this purpose:
http://rakeshrajan.com/blog/archive/2005/10/11/43.aspx

--
HTH,
Rakesh Rajan
MVP, MCSD
http://www.rakeshrajan.com/
"gabriel" wrote:

Greetings,

I am working on a project and cannot choose the best way to achieve this :

I got a method which returns an error code like this : DISK_FULL or
PERMISSION_DENIED.

Those are constants defined in a class named "Constants" :

public static byte DISK_FULL = 1;
public static byte PERMISSION_DENIED = 2;

Now I have a resource file with keys like this :

DISK_FULL Sorry, your disk is full, should make some room.
PERMISSION_DENIED Sorry, bla bla.
But since they are constants, the keys are not retrieved (I try to
retrieve "1" for instance), of course.

I thought to design my resource file like this :

1 Sorry, your disk is full, should make some room.
2 bla bla

My dilema is that my file is not very human-readable that way :(
I then thought but I could make things like this :
public static string DISK_FULL = "DISK_FULL";
public static string PERMISSION_DENIED = "PERMISSION_DENIED";

And a resource file with keys like this :

DISK_FULL Sorry, your disk is full, should make some room.
PERMISSION_DENIED Sorry, bla bla.
But I find it useless to use strings here : bytes are shorter so faster
managed (yes this does not change everything, I know ;) )

My question : what do you do ??

phew, he finally asked the question ;)
I come from the java world so maybe I am missing here :)

Thank you for your patience

[gabriel]

> The easy way of dealing with this is to use an enum. You can easily get

the name of an enum element, you get the speed of ints (or whatever -
although frankly as you'd only be passing a reference round, I think
your performance concern is misplaced), and you keep the human
readability of the file.

Thank you, I'll dig that !

humbly yours :)