In the last six months, I have dabbled a little bit in Ruby. What I found was that I didn’t really want to work in Ruby but I wanted some of the beautiful syntax. I use extension methods to bring some of that goodness back to C#.

Here are a few favorites:

public static bool IsANumber(this string value)
{
float output;
return float.TryParse(value, out output);
}

public static bool IsNotANumber(this string value)
{
float output;
return !float.TryParse(value, out output);
}

public static string FormattedAsAPhoneNumberWithDashes(this string s)
{
if(s.IsNotANumber() || s.Length != 10)
{
return string.Empty;
}

StringBuilder formattedPhone = new StringBuilder();
formattedPhone.Append(s.Substring(0, 3));
formattedPhone.Append("-");
formattedPhone.Append(s.Substring(3, 3));
formattedPhone.Append("-");
formattedPhone.Append(s.Substring(6, 4));
return formattedPhone.ToString();
}

public static string XmlEncode(this string s)
{

return string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(s) ? string.Empty : System.Security.SecurityElement.Escape(s);
}

public static bool IsNullOrWhiteSpace(this string value)
{
return string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(value);
}

public static string SafeTrim(this string value)
{
return value == null ? string.Empty : value.Trim();
}

public static string SafeParseStringToDate(this string dateToParse)
{
DateTime dtTemp;
return DateTime.TryParse(dateToParse, out dtTemp) ? dtTemp.ToString() : string.Empty;

}

public static string TrimmedAndLowered(this string value)
{
return value.SafeTrim().ToLower();
}

public static string AddAProperCommaToAName(this string lastname, string firstname)
{
if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(lastname) && !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(firstname))
return lastname + ", " + firstname;

return !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(lastname) ? lastname : firstname;
}

public static bool IsNotNull(this object obj)
{
return obj != null;
}

public static bool IsNull(this object obj)
{
return obj == null;
}

public static bool In(this string value, params string[] paramArray)
{
	return value.IsNotNull() && paramArray.Any(param => param.TrimmedAndLowered() == value.TrimmedAndLowered());
}

public static bool In(this int? value, params int[] paramArray)
{
	return value.IsNotNull() && paramArray.Any(param => param == value);
}

public static bool In(this int value, params int[] paramArray)
{
	return paramArray.Any(param => param == value);
}

public static string RemoveNumericCharacters(this string value)
{
	Regex regex = new Regex("[0-9]");
	value = regex.Replace(value, "");
	return value;
}


public static string RemoveNonNumericCharacters(this string value)
{
	if (value == null)
		return string.Empty;
	Regex onlyNumeric = new Regex(@"[^\d]");
	var result =  onlyNumeric.Replace(value, string.Empty);
	
	return result;
}