I realize that every time I post code, although I'm still a rookie in this sport, I'm putting my neck out there for some serious criticism.  But, that’s the only way to have fun in the dev world.  Ever since the introduction of Extension Methods in C# 3.0, I find myself writing a lot of utility methods.  By making them Extension methods, I make my code a lot easier to read and I just enjoy the syntax of extension methods anyways.  I’m listing a few of mine that I keep handy for many projects over time.

1. GetLastRange<T>
   

   This one is very handy because it lets me get a range from the end of a collection object.  I found that calculating the end and the amount of objects left is tedious if you have to get the trailing end of a collection multiple times.

   public static ReadOnlyCollection<T> GetLastRange<T>(this Collection<T> sourceList, Int32 startIndex)
   {
       var thisList = sourceList.ToList().GetRange(startIndex, sourceList.Count - startIndex);
       return thisList.AsReadOnly();
   }

    

2.  ToStandardBool
   

   This method may not seem important, but becomes important when you’re dealing with a strange backend.  I found when querying a few data sources that they return boolean values as string.  I’ve seen many different variations of this, most of the time “1” is true and “0'” is false.  But I've also seen a String.Empty or a null value denote false from a web service.  Instead of chewing out the web service provider, i wrote a method that catches that problem for me in most cases.  I’m sure the culture information is unnecessary.

   public static bool ToStandardBool(this string input) 
   { 
       return input.Equals((1).ToString(), StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase);
   }

    

3. ToTitleCase
   

   This method just simplifies converting a string to Title Case.  I felt the standard MSDN way of doing it would clutter a method, so I added this extension method to contain all of that unnecessary logic.

   public static String ToTitleCase(this String input)
   {
       return Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(input);
   }

    

4. AsReadOnly
   

   This is another simple method that I find very useful.  If you use FxCop, you’ll know that Microsoft suggests mainly returning ReadOnlyCollections from publically visible methods.  This just cuts down on the code that needs to be written to return your LINQ queries in the “correct” manner.

   public static ReadOnlyCollection<T> AsReadOnly<T>(this IEnumerable<T> thisList)
   {
       return thisList.ToList().AsReadOnly();
   }

    

This is just a sampling of the methods I use.  I’m curious what neat extension methods everyone else is using… As I posted on Twitter: