Alex Rivera | Logout

One liner for If string is not null or empty else

Asked 2013-03-27T13:47:38.177
81

I usually use something like this for various reasons throughout an application:

if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(strFoo))
{
     FooTextBox.Text = "0";
}
else
{
     FooTextBox.Text = strFoo;
}

If I'm going to be using it a lot I will create a method that returns the desired string. For example:

public string NonBlankValueOf(string strTestString)
{
    if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(strTestString))
        return "0";
    else
        return strTestString;
}

and use it like:

FooTextBox.Text = NonBlankValueOf(strFoo);

I always wondered if there was something that was part of C# that would do this for me. Something that could be called like:

FooTextBox.Text = String.IsNullOrEmpty(strFoo,"0")

the second parameter being the returned value if String.IsNullOrEmpty(strFoo) == true

If not does anyone have any better approaches they use?

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1 Answer

14

You can write your own Extension method for type String :-

 public static string NonBlankValueOf(this string source)
 {
    return (string.IsNullOrEmpty(source)) ? "0" : source;
 }

Now you can use it like with any string type

FooTextBox.Text = strFoo.NonBlankValueOf();
answered 2013-03-27T13:52:34.437

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