Let’s say you have a class and you want to store a collection of strings in that class. How would your method look like which would let you add a string to the class?

   1: public class SampleClass

   2:  {

   3:      private List<string> myList = null; 

   4:  

   5:      public SampleClass()

   6:      {

   7:          myList = new List<string>(); 

   8:      }

   9:  }

There are a couple of ways you could write the method; it also depends on what are you trying to achieve. Below are some of the samples how you could do this (yes, I know, there are probably million other ways to do this :)):

   1: public void AddItem(string item)

   2: {

   3:     // Do something 

   4: }

   5:  

   6: public void AddItems(List<string> items)

   7: { 

   8:     // Do something 

   9: }

  10:  

  11: public void AddItems (string [] items) 

  12: {

  13:     // Do something 

  14: }

Every method above has it’s benefits and drawbacks – I have to pass in an array of string, I can only pass in one string a the time, sometimes I want to pass in 3 strings and sometimes 1 – why can’t I use one method only?).

There’s a keyword called “params” you could use to solve this problem – with this keyword you can pass in as many parameters as you like; for example all calls below are made to the same method:

   1: SampleClass my = new SampleClass();

   2: my.AddItems("One"); 

   3: my.AddItems("One", "Two");

   4: my.AddItems("One", "Two", "Three"); 

And here’s how the method would look like:

   1: public void AddItems(params string[] items)

   2: {

   3:     foreach (string item in items)

   4:     { 

   5:         // Do something

   6:     }

   7: }

I spent a while or so on this 'issue' I had. Basically it's not even an issue, it's an expected behavior (if you now what the expected behavior should be). I was using a Guid class to create a new guid in a project which would be used later in the application (guid is passed on to another part of the system). Here's the code I had:

 Guid myGuid = new Guid();

Everything worked fine, no errors, no exceptions, nothing. If you check 'myGuid' you would see that the guid is indeed assigned to the variable. But the problem is that the guid is empty (e.g. {000...000}). Instead of spending time on researching what else could went wrong, I didn't even think about that line. Once I changed the above line to: Guid myGuid = Guid.NewGuid () - everything was working fine.

I guess the 'lesson' is - check the most obvious things first - I usually tend to skip over the obvious stuff because 'I know that's right' and 'It can't be that simple'. Well, looks like sometimes it is :)

First post is published!

If you are interested in SharePoint, Visual Studio, Office, VSTO or any other combination you should head over to our team blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/vssharepointtoolsblog) and subscribe to it.

How about Arabic or Korean?

Imagine you are testing a product localized to Arabic language (or any other language you don't know how to read, write or you don't understand it). If you are familiar with the product in your language of preference then the task of finding buttons, windows and other things in the user interface shouldn't be a big problem (but yes, it still can be a pain). But what if you get an error message in that language?

You would probably agree that it can be very hard to quickly find someone who speaks those languages. There's a Live Translator website you can use to translate the error message or any other text. There's also an addin up on Windows Live Gallery which adds a Translator button to your IE and can translate the web page you are currently looking at to 12 languages. Even though the translations are not perfect, it's usually enough to get the idea what the error is about.

If you don't like using machine translation there could actually be a second 'solution' to your problem - you can always install the product in language you understand and try to get the same error message. But what if you don't get that error message? Even if you do get the 'same' error message - can you tell with 100% certainity that the error message in let's say English language is the same one you are getting in other languages? That's the other story. Maybe there is a bug which is specific to the localized version?  You should definitely verify that.

Our team is still hiring.

Great news: Our team is hiring both developers and testers!

If you are excited about VSTO, Office, SharePoint and Visual Studio this could be the right position for you. You can read more about the open positions here. The descriptions are quite extensive (take a look at both dev and test position descriptions) but if you still have some questions feel free to comment or contact me - my email is PeterJ (at microsoft.com).

You have nothing to loose if you send in your resume and apply for the position!

Nine VSTO/VSTA Power Tools were release to web today. You can download them here or read the short descriptions at Andrew Whitechapels blog.

This post will be about code formatting and maybe some reasons for the formatting decisions developers make.  Actual code that got me thinking used an if statement, but below I used 2 for loops because its easier to spot what can go wrong:

for (int i = 0; i < 10; i ++)
    for (int j = 0; j < 10; j ++)
          Method1();
    Method2();
Method3();

First question: Do you know how many times are the methods being called?  If you copy/paste the code and run it you will see that Method1 is called 100 times and after that Method2 and Method3 are executed. Looks good.

Now, imagine you are looking at that code someone else wrote and try to answer this question: Are you 100% sure that Method2() should be executed only once? Maybe the method should be executed only 10 times? Or maybe 100 times? It is a tough question and you probably can't answer it without asking the person who wrote the code some questions. I bet you there would be no ambiguity if you used parenthesis like this:

for (int i = 0; i < 10; i ++)
{
    for (int j = 0; j < 10; j ++)
    {
          Method1();
    }
    Method2();
}
Method3();

I remember when I was an intern in Dublin I wrote similar code (it was also a for loop) and I didn't use the parenthesis. Senior developer who was doing a review asked me the same question. Your code will be more readable if you use parenthesis in this case. Besides, you could also avoid some bugs.

I am not sure what the reason is, for not using parenthesis but a coworker told me about the another formatting 'issue' and the reason for it.

public void MyMethod (int arg1, string arg2, bool arg3) {
      DoSomethingHere ();
}

Notice in above code the parenthesis is inline with the method declaration. And apparently the reason for that was that back in the days the monitors didn't have high resolutions and writing the parenthesis in the same line saved you one line on the monitor screen.

I am guessing the reason people are still writing the code this way is only a habit and nothing else. I know everybody has his own style of coding and code formatting and this doesn't mean your code is bad.

Let me end this post with a short story that could apply to the above text. I read this in Steve Maguire's book Debugging the Development Process. The story goes like this:

"A boy asked his mother how come she cuts off the edges of a pot roast when putting it into the pot. Mother told him that that's how her mother taught her to do. So, boy went to his grandmother and he got the same answer. Then he went to his grand-grandmother and ask her the same question. The answer was: Well, back then my pot was to small and the meat didn't fit inside."

Old habits never die.

Sharepoint development - Dev2Dev:

Sharepoint Development - Making Sense of it All - Part I
Sharepoint Development - Making Sense of it All - Part II

It is pretty easy to do that. Here is a piece of code which creates a folder in document library and adds a file to the created folder:

SPSite site = new Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite("http://localhost");            
SPWeb spWeb = site.RootWeb;

SPList docLib = spWeb.Lists["My Document Library"];          
SPListItem folder = docLib.Folders.Add(docLib.RootFolder.ServerRelativeUrl, SPFileSystemObjectType.Folder, "My folder");
folder.Update();

using (FileStream fs = File.OpenRead (@"C:\TestDoc.doc"))
{
           SPFile file = folder.Folder.Files.Add("TestDoc.doc", fs);
           file.Update(); 
}

Before you run this code you must add a reference to Microsoft.SharePoint.dll which is located at:

X:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.dll

Also this code assumes that document library named "My Document Library" exists. If you want to create a document library you can use this code:

spWeb.Lists.Add("My Document Library", "This is my first document library", SPListTemplateType.DocumentLibrary); 

Looks like "Insert Code" plug-in works just fine ...

You create a new VSTO solution (Word document or Excel workbook) and you run the solution. Respective application will open and you make some changes to the document/workbook - maybe you add a few pictures, change text formatting, etc. Once you're done you save the document and close the application. You might be surprised to see that the changes you made are not reflected in the document designer inside Visual Studio. Don't panic - changes you made are not lost.  Reason you won't see any changes is that there are multiple copies of the document/workbook.

When you run the solution Visual Studio copies the document from solution directory to \bin\debug\ or \bin\release\ folder. This is the document that will open when you run your VSTO solution and this is the document where you made all your changes. But when you close the application and return to Visual Studio, the document opened inside VS is from your solution directory.

So, instead making changes to the document when you F5 the solution, do your changes inside Visual Studio  (if you're customizing an empty, new document) or create your solution based on existing document which was customized outside VS. Or you can open the document in \bin\debug folder and copy/paste the changes you made.

Yesterday we had a nice weather here in Redmond (sun was up almost whole day - there was no rain at all :)). So in the evening we decided to drive to Seattle. We went to check the view from the Space Needle and it was beautiful. Nives took some pictures  - you can find them here.

 Happy Holidays!

Kris Makey started blogging so I guess you can expect some posts about VSTO ClickOnce deployment on his blog.

Looks like 2008 will be year of conferences:

• Office Dev Con, February 10-13, San Jose, California
• Sharepoint conference, March 3-6, Seattle

And: PDC08! It was announced for October 26 (pre-conference) - October 30, 2008 in Los Angeles, California.

You probably saw some posts about the 2008 Microsoft Office System Developer Conference which is coming up in February. Conference will be held in San Jose, California from Feb 10-13. The sessions will be posted here.

Compared to the Office Dev Con two years ago which was by invitation only, everyone can register for this years conference. Besides that you can get free a pass to the conference and the complete package - that's a free pass AND free travel to San Jose, California.

There's a contest going on over at CodeProject. Here's how can you get the free conference pass and free conference pass + free travel:

1. Record a 2 min video and explain why you want to attend the conference.
2. Write a great article explaining how to build an app using 2007 Microsoft Office system (hint: use VSTO :)).

Members of CodeProject will vote for the best in these two categories and the highest-rated will be a winner (also rated by judges). Deadline is January 15, so you have a plenty of time left. 

This contest reminds me to the one which was held for PDC '05 at Channel9. I was one of the winners in that contest and I got a free travel/hotel + PDC '05 pass. I remember that was my first trip to US, besides I met a couple of my current co-workers at that conference! Now you decide if it was worth it :)

I was thinking on doing this during my first or second week at Microsoft but I just didn't manage it. As many new employees said before:
"It's like drinking from the firehose". Believe me, it is.

Since this is my first post to my new blog on MSDN let me introduce myself. My name is Peter Jausovec and I was born and raised in Slovenia. I got a job offer from Microsoft almost a year and a half ago, but I graduated in March this year and I relocated to Redmond in October (next week will be my third month anniversary as SDET here at Microsoft :)).

As you probably noticed in the blog description, this blog will be mainly about VSTO, SharePoint, Office development and other cool stuff
we are doing at Trinity team.

Visual Studio 2008 was released on November 19th and if you're an MSDN subscriber you can get your copy here. You can also download trial edition or Express Edition.

Here are some of the cool VSTO features in Visual Studio 2008 you should check out: 

• ClickOnce based deployment (I had to put this one on the first place :))  
• Ribbon Visual Designer
• Outlook Form Regions
• SharePoint Workflow
• Word Content Controls
• VBA-VSTO interop