Optional Parameters, Polymorphism & F#

Optional parameters are one of those things. Love them or hate them they have their place. Generally, F# style dictates using optional parameters over overloaded methods. From MSDN In F#, optional arguments are usually used instead of overloaded methods. However, overloaded methods are permitted in the language Briefly, the way to declare optional parameters in […]

Using the Telerik Controls from ASP MVC via Nuget

Recently, Telerik started providing their open source controls over nuget, and I happened to be on an ASP MVC 3 project that is potentially going to consume them, so I thought I’d look into the nuget support. As it turns out merely installing the extensions via nuget will not magically turn your boring ASP MVC […]

Generating Word Documents Part 3 – Mail Merge without Word

In previous installments I covered the use of XML databinding. This time around I thought I’d concentrate purely on manipulating content controls. It should be noted that, technically, Custom XML parts days are numbered, and I want to show how to side step this potential problem. In this instalment, we’ll begin to form an infrastructure around […]

The Coin Change Kata – In F#

After having read and done Matt Hamilton‘s Coin Change Kata, I thought I would share one of my solutions to the kata and also some refinements to the kata itself. I split the kata over two scenarios, the intention being that I start with the first scenario for a given language / approach and then […]

Generating Word Documents – Part 2: Simple Databinding

In Part 1 we covered the problem of generating word documents from a high level perspective. In this instalment, I’ll walk through some lower level concepts. I’ll show how Content Controls can be used to inject data into our templates. A Simple Template Depending on the source, this can either be the most tedious, or most pleasurable […]

Removing un-versioned files with SVN and powershell

I’ve been using SlikSVN’s command line tools for managing SVN stuff. However, there are some things a GUI client will do for you OOTB, and a treeclean is generally one of them.

Removing the Ceremony from C#

While some people are asking what can we add to C#, some are asking ‘maybe we should take stuff out’? Well, perhaps we could do both…

Generating Documents with the Open XML SDK – Part 1

Recently I was asked to create a document generation engine for a loan application and quote system at work. Our customers needed to enter some basic information about a loan applicant, and at a later time receive a URL to the bundle of PDF’s which represented the data rich documents they needed to send to their client. […]

Folders in F# Projects

While there is no IDE support for folders in F# projects, the .fsproj file is still just a build script. So as long as you are prepared to manage things on both your file system and in your solution explorer, then folders are actually possible. To do this, right-click the project file in solution explorer, […]

Resharper live templates: drop down lists

Just as VS2010 has gone RC, I’ve noticed that R# 5 has released a compatible build. Today I thought I’d highlight a simple, yet useful feature that doesn’t currently receive much press: Custom Live templates can now use drop down lists. As an example of how to take advantage of this feature, I’m going to […]