Numbing the Pain of SomeControl foo = (SomeControl) FindControl("Foo")

Monday, May 14, 2007

This is one of those little things I'm looking forward to getting out of C# 3.0: inferred types. I've always throught to myself, "I just declared the variable to be that type, can't you figure it out without me spelling it out for you, C# compiler?" Well, the compiler can't figure it out yet, but here's a little snippet I cooked up so at least I don't have to type the type name twice:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<CodeSnippets xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2005/CodeSnippet">
  <CodeSnippet Format="1.0.0">
    <Header>
      <Title>var</Title>
      <Shortcut>var</Shortcut>
      <Description>Code snippet for declaring and initializing a variable with a type cast</Description>
      <Author>Adam Anderson</Author>
      <SnippetTypes>
        <SnippetType>Expansion</SnippetType>
      </SnippetTypes>
    </Header>
    <Snippet>
      <Declarations>
        <Literal>
          <ID>type</ID>
          <ToolTip>Variable type</ToolTip>
          <Default>Type</Default>
        </Literal>
        <Literal>
          <ID>name</ID>
          <ToolTip>Variable name</ToolTip>
          <Default>Name</Default>
        </Literal>
        <Object>
          <ID>value</ID>
          <ToolTip>Initial value</ToolTip>
          <Default>Value</Default>
          <Type>System.Object</Type>
        </Object>
      </Declarations>
      <Code Language="csharp">
        <![CDATA[$type$ $name$ = ($type$) $value$;
        $end$]]>
      </Code>
    </Snippet>
  </CodeSnippet>
</CodeSnippets>

To install, copy and paste the above XML into a file and save it with a .snippet extension to your code snippets directory (My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Code Snippets\Visual C#\My Code Snippets). To use, simply type "var" and press Tab.