Palermo4

# re: How To: Create a Strongly-Typed Property For HttpContext.Items

I never understood this " as string" thing.  You fully expect it to be a string, and if it's not a string what then?  You ignore it?  That seems totally wrong to me.  If you've defined as part of the contract that bucket this contains strings, then it sure as hell better have a string in it otherwise something is wrong.  If it doesn't have a string, you WANT it to fail so you can go in there, find out why, and FIX it.

What I'm saying is that you should use (string)HttpContext.Current.Items[KEY_ERROR_MESSAGE] instead of (HttpContext.Current.Items[KEY_ERROR_MESSAGE]as string).  

If you actually had a temporary value, and checked it for null, and then did something with it, well that's a different story.  But you aren't.  Cast it properly!

Please help stop this terrible meme!!

# re: How To: Create a Strongly-Typed Property For HttpContext.Items

Yes, this is much better than just a plain text, but I learned to rely on enumerations rather than strings or constants. So, HttpContext.Current.Items[ItemKey.ErrorMessage] would be my way of doing it.

A different question would be how you are wrapping the HttpContext.Current.Items and not use it directly? NUnit testing, mocking - I find it difficult to implement if you use session/cache/items directly...

# re: How To: Create a Strongly-Typed Property For HttpContext.Items

When I need context items, I build a class with a static GetCurrent() or Current depending on how I will use it.

public class ContextInfo

{

private static string contextKey = typeof(ContextInfo).FullName;

private ContextInfo()

{ }

public static ContextInfo GetCurrent()

{

ContextInfo contextItem = HttpContext.Current.Items[contextKey] as ContextInfo;

if (contextItem == null)

{

contextItem = new ContextInfo();

HttpContext.Current.Items[contextKey] = contextItem;

}

return contextItem;

}

private string _errorMessage;

public string ErrorMessage

{

get { return _errorMessage; }

set { _errorMessage = value; }

}

}

# re: How To: Create a Strongly-Typed Property For HttpContext.Items

Nice tips. I never thought of passing values like this. Thanks

# re: How To: Create a Strongly-Typed Property For HttpContext.Items

ok solution for 1 values, but create a custom context class is a much better idea:

codebetter.com/.../Give-your-website-more-context.aspx

curious, why use a soft cast? don't you WANT an exception to happen if someone's trying to store something else in there? I mean, better to know that you have something un-castable to a string in there than ignoring it.

# re: How To: Create a Strongly-Typed Property For HttpContext.Items

How do you keep the keys straight across pages and user controls?

# re: How To: Create a Strongly-Typed Property For HttpContext.Items

Joe: Its only saved in the context of the current request.

# re: How To: Create a Strongly-Typed Property For HttpContext.Items

You should probably snag a local reference to the current context as a member variable as well rather than doing an HttpContext.Current lookup each time a property is called.