.NET Tips and Tricks

[Frinavale]

Edit
Many times we spend hours and hours trying to solve a problem. When we finally figure it out, we want to share it to keep others from suffering the same way!

That's why we have this "Tips and Tricks" thread. Post your solutions and tricks that you think will help someone down the road here.

If the tip is complex or long, you might want to consider making an article out of it and posting it in the Insights forum.

Looking forward to all the helpful tips!

--insertAlias

Note: The following was the old thread in the answers forum. I am merging it here for convenience.
/Edit

Frinny's Tip O' The Week
Many of us find our way to Bytes.com seeking help while we're facing a programming problem. Sometimes we just need a pointer to get us going in the right direction.

I've started this thread to provide tips and "how-tos" on common problems that everyone faces. Some of these posts will be provided by me (Frinny) but other's will be selected according to how important and informative the posts are.

I hope you'll find something useful here!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The 3rd Week of April 2007:
How To Use Databases:

• How to Use A Database In Your Program
• How to Use Store Procedures In Your Program (provided by: jyothi1105)

.................................................. .........................................

The 2nd Week of May 2007:
Sessions:

• What are Sessions and How to Use Them

The 3rd Week of May 2007:
Send E-mails:

• A Quick Reference On How To Send An Email Using .NET
• Using Icons In .NET (provided by Plater)

The 4th Week of May 2007:
Faxes:

• How to find the status of a fax operation using FAXCOM.dll (provided by Bharath)

The 5th Week of May 2007:
Checking TextBoxes for a Number:

• How to check if a textbox contains a number

.................................................. .........................................

The 1st Week of August 2007:
The.Net Framework:

• What is .NET? Why do I need the Framework? (provided by TRScheel)

The 3rd Week of August 2007:
Reports:

• Converting Crystal Report to .PDF or other format (provided by Bharathreddy)

The 4th Week of August 2007:
Connection Pooling:

• Understanding Connection Pooling (provided by Viswarajan)

.................................................. .........................................


The 1st Week of September 2007:
Master Pages:

• Introduction to Master Pages (using C#) (provided by Bharathreddy)

The 3rd Week of September 2007:
GridViews:

• Custom GridView Formatting Tutorial (provided by MSDN)

.................................................. .........................................

The 4th Week of May 2009:
Asp.NET Life Cycle:

• Overview: ASP.NET Life Cycle (provided by MSDN)

.................................................. .........................................

[sashi]

Hi Frinny,

Great work, keep it up. Good luck & Take care.

[Curtis Rutland]

I've moved this thread here and resurrected it so we can start posting our helpful tips and tricks. Anything that you figure out that you think may help someone else is welcome here.

Just add a comment with your tip!

Thanks
--insertAlias

[balabaster]

Ben's Tip o' the day:

Always save your work before you go home at night and don't expect that your computer won't have rebooted itself by the time you come into work the next morning!

[Curtis Rutland]

Well, I've recently discovered how to hide the caret (cursor) in a textbox.

[DllImport("user32")]
private static extern bool HideCaret(IntPtr hWnd);

Then, write an event handler for the "Enter" event for the textbox, and use the handle of the textbox. Like this:

private void tbOutput_Enter(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    HideCaret(tbOutput.Handle);
}

[kirillosipov]

An elegant way to parse Enums in C#: http://ko-sw.blogspot.com/2009/03/el...e-c-enums.html

[Frinavale]

Conversion Chart for C# to VB scope modifiers:

-------------------------------------------------------
   C#               |    VB
-------------------------------------------------------
public              |  Public
protected           |  Protected
private             |  Private
internal            |  Friend
internal protected  |  Protected Friend
static              |  Shared
const               |  Const
-------------------------------------------------------

[Frinavale]

A website that helps compare/translate VB.NET -> C#:

VB.NET and C# Comparison

[vkbishnoi]

Vertical progress bar
------------------------------------------------------------
Derive your class as shown below

class VertProgress : ProgressBar
{
      override CreateParams CreateParams
      {
           get
           {
                 CreateParams crParam = base.CreateParams;
                 crParam.Style |= 0x04;
                 return crParam; 
           }
       }
}

Once you build your application, in the toolbar you will see VertProgress. Drag and drop it in the windows form. Strech it vertically.