QueryString - A Cool tip

The exciting thing about my work is that I learn new things. Whenever I learn new things, I get excited :-)

Today I learnt some exciting (weird, may I call it) thing about using QueryStrings in ASPX pages.

When you pass a querystring in an ASP page, and you need to check the same, you go ahead and do:

If Request.QueryString("whatever") = "whatever" Then
'Do Whatever
End If

If the page do not get the querystring "whatever", it wouldn't mind.
BUT, in ASP.NET, the page would throw an expception (Object reference not set to an instance of an object)!!!
So, if you have a scenario in your application where you might not pass the querystring, you might want to do something on this line:

If Not (Request.QueryString("whatever") Is Nothing) AndAlso Request.QueryString("whatever") = "whatever" Then 
'Do Whatever
End If

(MAY BE THIS WAS TO REMIND ME: .NET IS ALL ABOUT OBJECTS. IF THERE IS NO OBJECT, YOU AIN'T GONNA DO A DAMN!)

Have you ever encountered such cases? What measures did you take to tackle them? Please add your two cents.

My First Talk

It was Love At First Sight with User Controls in ASP.NET. And lo! I got a chance to speak about the same at the recent Central Penn .NET User Group meeting. Thanks a billion to Judy Calla!

Also thanks to Giphi for lending me his cool laptop for the presentation.

To Code-Behind Or Not To Code-Behind

A really informative and healthy discussion are in Scott Mitchell's
blog entry. Please have a look at it. http://www.scottonwriting.net/sowBlog/posts/1005.aspx

I would lilke to add my two cents to this one. I would vote my 100%
support to Code-Behind. I consider this as a revolution which happened to
me as a
developer. Whatever the Gurus preach, this has changed my life!

I had this one page developed and running in production for months. And
there was a link on this page, which navigtes the user to another page
(Page2.aspx),
which displays some business related information highly useful for the
end-users. For some reason, this page (Page2.aspx) was very slow and
was tming out.
Our helpdesk was being pestered by the angry users. The DBAs found that
the SQL in the concerned stored procedure was the real culprit and they
wanted some time to
fix the same. The management did not want the users to access the
particular page. The problem came to me and I removed the Link and replaced
with a label which went along "This functionality is not available for
now, for technical reasons...". My bosses were worried about doing
another build, but I convinced them that this is different and they just
needed to copy/paste the aspx file to the production machine.

They did as I told, and they were happy that they did.

See the beauty of the Code-Behind? I had done so many changes to the
code-behind file, and if it was an inline code, I would not what I would
do :-)

 

 

10 Unwritten Rules for a Consultant to Live By

http://donxml.com/allthingstechie/archive/2004/08/26/1231.aspx.

A wonerful insight by DonXML.

Regulator

I tried Regulator tool for Regular Expression testing by Roy Osherove. This ones a great tool which could save us all time and frustration :-) Believe me, testing Regular Expressions is no kid's game. Its takes everything in you, and it tests your patience. Regulator makes everything easy for you. Try this yourselves.

Testing BlogJet

I have installed an interesting application - BlogJet. It's a cool Windows client for my blog tool (as well as for other tools). Get your copy here: http://blogjet.com

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." -- Pablo Picasso

BOOK SAVVY!

I am a book savvy person. Don’t get me wrong. I am not a voracious reader like my wife. She is one voracious reader I have ever met in my whole life! I am not exaggerating at all! She reads all the stuff, mostly fiction, and the amazing part is that she finds enough time to spend on her books even though she looks after our 10 month old naughty daughter Parvathy.

Well, coming to the point, I am not a voracious reader. But why do I call my self a book savvy person? Because, I like to buy books. Read them or not, I like to buy them. Mostly technical. And to be more precise, .NET books.

Yesterday, when I was browsing Eric's and Scott Mitchell's blogs, I somehow fell into AMAZON.COM and encountered the listing of CODE COMPLETE. I wanted to buy (and will buy it sooner), but I stopped myself. Something stopped me from buying that book, not because I didn't want to. I found me asking myself, "What are you doing? Have you read the books you bought lately?" May be yes. May be 1 or 2 chapters. "Well let’s finish them, and give those books some value they deserve."

Maybe what I thought was right. And I decided one thing today. I will complete all the books that I bought recently, to that point that I think would be enough for the reason I bought them for. Only then I would buy another book.

And then the first one would be CODE COMPLETE!



What books have you bought within 2 months? Do you think you do justice to the books you buy? Please add your two cents.

Going Indpendent

A very informative blog entry on Going Independent.
http://loudcarrot.com/Blogs/dave/archive/2004/08/17/379.aspx

Scott Mitchell

Cannot start a blog without saying some words on Scott Mitchell, as he has made some influence on my .NET life. His artciles in MSDN, 4guysfromrolla, as well as his blog as made me more matured in thinking .NET. He has this magic on explaining things that most authors don't. He goes in deep and explaing things using diagrams which is much appealing to the readers.

KUDOS TO SCOTT MITCHELL!

Central Pennsylvania .NET User's group

It has been my privilege to attend the Central Penn .NET User's Group, whose meetings are held in Harrisburg area, for the past 8 months. Judy Calla, the group leader, has done a tremendous job in arranging the meetings, inviting the speakers (from INETA!!!) and foremost, getting it going!!

We are re-vamping the whole web site, as its being almost 2 years old.

New Article Published

My article's been published in ASPALLIANCE.COM. This is about displaying a sum total of a numeric column in a DataGrid. Check it out at http://www.aspalliance.com/494.

The Beginning

My name is Rajeev Gopal and I am starting my web presence here! YUP!
I would be posting my scribblings on .NET. My thoughts, my dreams, my experience.