System.Collections.Concurrent provides a bunch of thread-safe collections that you can use when doing asynchronous programming without worrying about bad stuff happening. The simplest ones, ConcurrentBag<T> (which allows you to put stuff in and take things out in an unordered way) and ConcurrentDictionary<TKey, TValue> (a key/value set) are simple and easy to use, but there isn’t … [Read more…]
Newtonsoft Json.NET is a super popular (#1 most downloaded NuGet package) framework for serializing and deserializing json. In my experience, I haven’t really had to do much other than use the most basic serialization and deserialization. Sometimes, though, there is a time when the API you’re working with presents you with something goofy. In my … [Read more…]
Sometimes you just need to kick off a process and not care about what happens to it. The old “fire-and-forget” scenario. Sometimes you want an action to happen after a certain duration of time. I recently had an application where I would detect a lost connection, and then enter a reconnect loop. After a set … [Read more…]
Ludum Dare is an over-the-weekend video game creation competition that happens three times per year in April, August, and December. Ludum Dare is latin for “To give a game.” There is no prize for winning – you simply get bragging rights. The competition is to foster creativity and encourage people to make a game. Potential … [Read more…]
This is part of a somewhat broader topic of unit testing that I will probably cover more in depth later. Unit Testing Authentication on a Web API Controller At work I made a Web API Controller that has a POST method on it to allow someone to forcibly suspend another user’s session. This kind of … [Read more…]
In part one I described how to get a list of removable storage devices (memory cards, USB sticks, etc). In this part, we’re going to be able to pick a memory card and transfer the contents into a catch-all “vault.” Picking out good pictures will come in a later post; for now, we’re just going … [Read more…]
This is Part #1 of a multi-part series on a picture importer I am working on. Picture Importer I’m a (very) amateur photographer. I bought a simple DSLR camera (a Canon EOS REBEL T4i) a few years ago, and since then I’ve been the family photographer at various events. I find that I take a … [Read more…]
If you ever want to pull a version number out of a file’s name (like a NuGet package, for example), it is pretty easy with regex. Of course, I suck at regex. I always need to look up the syntax and even then I probably won’t get it right. So, anyway, here is the code … [Read more…]