Suggestions For String and DateTime utility functions' Library using Extension Methods.

Question

I'm writing a library of Extension Methods for String and DateTime utility functions in C#. Can you please help me out by suggesting the useful utlity functions for String and DateTime you may want to be part of it ? With your suggestions I can make it more cohesive and Collective.

Thanks!

Answer 1

String Extensions

1. MakeTitle -- Make a title from a TitleCase string, .i.e, turn "FooBar" in to "Foo Bar". I find this very useful for printing Enums: fooEnum.ToString("g").MakeTitle()
2. Collapse -- Trim whitespace from both ends and collapse all internal spaces to a single space.
3. IsNothing -- Like IsNullOrEmpty, but trims whitespace first, helpful for TextBox inputs that you don't want to be just spaces, but set to null if nothing was input.

DateTime Extensions

1. EndOfDay -- set time to 11:59:59 PM on the given date
2. StartOfDay -- set time to 12:00:00 AM on the given date

Answer 2

public static bool IsNullOrEmpty(this string value){
    return string.IsNullOrEmpty(value);
}
public static string Reverse(this string value) {
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(value)) {
        char[] chars = value.ToCharArray();
        Array.Reverse(chars);
        value = new string(chars);
    }
    return value;
}
public static string ToTitleCase(this string value) {
    return CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(value);
}
public static string ToTitleCaseInvariant(this string value) {
    return CultureInfo.InvariantCulture.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(value);
}

Trivial, but slighty nicer to call.

Answer 3

String Extensions

static string ToCamelCase(this string s) {...}  // Converts a string into Camel Notation, useful for code generation
static string ToPascalCase(this string s) {...} // Converts a string into Pascal Notation
static int [Soundex][1](this string s) {...}      // Gets the soundex of a string

DateTime Extensions

static bool IsWithinRange(this DateTime d, DateTime start, DateTime end) {...}
static string [ToRelativeTime][2](this DateTime d) {...}

Answer 4

What about methods that don't specifically extend string or DateTime, but rather target or return a string or DateTime? Then you could build some int and TimeSpan methods as well, so you can write fluent interfaces like:

  DateTime yesterday =  1.Days().Ago();

.

public static TimeSpan Days(this int value)
{
    return new TimeSpan(value, 0, 0, 0);
}

public static TimeSpan Hours(this int value)
{
    return new TimeSpan(value, 0, 0);
}

public static TimeSpan Minutes(this int value)
{
    return new TimeSpan(0, value, 0);
}

//...

.

public static DateTime Ago(this TimeSpan value)
{
    return DateTime.Now.Add(value.Negate());
}

public static DateTime FromNow(this TimeSpan value)
{
   return DateTime.Now.Add(value);
}