Tutorial Series: Free C# Fundamentals via ASP.NET Web Apps
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This lesson discusses the topic of naming conventions for common coding elements, such as, public classes, methods and properties, private fields, locally scoped variables, and so on. There are naming conventions that are established by the developer community at large. Then there are project-specific conventions agreed upon within the organization that you work in. Naming conventions are put in place to make it easier to discern meaning, and intent, in code.
Capitalization schemes are a common convention used to made code easier to read and follow. Often times, capitalization helps to distinguish the item that is being named. The two main capitalization schemes are “PascalCasing,” where each word in the identifier is capitalized, and “camelCasing” where the first word is lower case followed by capitalization for subsequent words:
In general, everything that is public will be PascalCase while everything that is private will be camelCase. Take, for instance, this block of code:
The public class name Hero is PascalCase.
The public property Name is PascalCase.
The private backing field _name is camelCase
Thee private heroHelperMethod() method is camelCase.
The public AttackPattern() method is PascalCase.
Notice how the backing field is prefixed with a single underscore. This is a general convention programmers adhere to when referring to backing fields. One of the reasons for doing so is you can quickly see, via Intellisense, that the member is a field.
Notice, too, the use of an underscore inside the constructor method for the Hero class. This is a naming convention used by programmers to help distinguish the private variables inside a class constructor from the input parameters displayed to the user. When creating methods, you want IntelliSense to display something easily understandable when showing what input parameters the method takes in. In this case, the Hero takes in a name and hitPoints:
What this does is:
You, the programmer, can then know which variable you are modifying, all while displaying easily understandable instructions to the end user:
Variables that are locally scoped – that is to say, initially declared within the body of a method – are generally supposed to be camelCase. In this example, the hero, battle and damageInflictedOnMonster objects/variables are only “alive” within the context of this local Page_Load() method, so they are set to lower-case/camelCase accordingly:
You may have noticed that we have been referencing Server Controls in the Default class through class-level instances of these Controls. However, you may be wondering where exactly that instance was defined. As you can see the Default class is declared as a partial class which means that this is only a partial representation of it and another part of it is somewhere else. If you were to right-click on a Server Control via its instance, such as the resultLabel, you can select “Go To Definition” to see the other part of this class definition:
You can see that the instance is indeed a field within the broader class definition for the Default class. You will also see that it has a protected accessibility modifier, meaning it is private to this class and inheriting classes, which is why camelCase is used.as Also, on the topic of Server Controls, notice how we have been including the Control name within the identifier to help communicate what it is an instance of. This is similar to a practice called “Hungarian Notation”:
While not common within the .NET development community, you may see some code that subscribes to the “Hungarian Notation” naming convention. The hallmark of this convention is the inclusion of the variables type – usually trimmed down to three characters or less – prefixed directly to the variable name. Here is the meaning behind the Hungarian Notation used below:
The ‘i’ in iCOunter refers to type int.
The ‘str’ in strFirstName refers to type string.
The ‘btn’ in btnOk refers to the Server Control type.
The ‘C’ in CPerson refers to this as being a class.
Tip:
Hungarian Notation may seem like a good idea, but is generally considered to be an outdated way of representing coding elements. This convention lost favor for a host of reasons including the fact that the intended meaning tends to be forgotten in a broader system and is difficult to remember and enforce.
When using a development environment as sophisticated as Visual Studio, it becomes quite redundant to include type and scope information directly within the variable name itself. You have a variety of tools that will volunteer this information to you with as little as moving the cursor over the variable name:
Lesson 1 - Series Introduction
Lesson 2 - Installing Visual Studio 2015
Lesson 3 - Building Your First Web App
Lesson 4 - Understanding What You Just Did
Lesson 5 - Working with Projects in Visual Studio
Lesson 6 - Simple Web Page Formatting in Visual Studio
Lesson 7 - Variables and Data Types
Lesson 8 - Data Type Conversion
Lesson 9 - Arithmetic Operators
Challenge 2 - ChallengeSimpleCalculator
Solution - ChallengeSimpleCalculator
Lesson 11 - Conditional If Statements
Lesson 12 - The Conditional Ternary Operator
Challenge 3 - ChallengeConditionalRadioButton
Solution - Challenge Conditional RadioButton
Lesson 13 - Comparison and Logical Operators
Lesson 13 Challenge - First Papa Bob's Website
Solution - Challenge First Papa Bob's Website
Lesson 14 - Working with Dates and Times
Lesson 15 - Working With Spans of Time
Lesson 16 - Working with the Calendar Server Control
Challenge 4 - Challenge Days Between Dates
Solution - Challenge Days Between Dates
Lesson 17 - Page_Load and Page.IsPostBack
Lesson 18 - Setting a Break Point and Debugging
Lesson 19 - Formatting Strings
Challenge 5 - Challenge Epic Spies Assignment
Solution - Challenge Epic Spies Assignment
Lesson 20 - Maintaining State with ViewState
Lesson 21 - Storing Values in Arrays
Lesson 22 - Understanding Multidimensional Arrays
Lesson 23 - Changing the Length of an Array
Challenge 6 - Challenge Epic Spies Asset Tracker
Solution - Challenge Epic Spies Asset Tracker
Lesson 24 - Understanding Variable Scope
Lesson 25 - Code Blocks and Nested If Statements
Lesson 26 - Looping with the For Iteration Statement
Challenge 7 - Challenge For Xmen Battle Count
Solution - Challenge For Xmen Battle Count
Lesson 27 - Looping with the while() & do...while() Iteration Statements
Lesson 28 - Creating and Calling Simple Helper Methods
Lesson 29 - Creating Methods with Input Parameters
Lesson 30 - Returning Values from Methods
Lesson 31 - Creating Overloaded Methods
Lesson 32 - Creating Optional Parameters
Lesson 33 - Creating Names Parameters
Lesson 34 - Creating Methods with Output Parameters
Challenge 8 - Challenge Postal Calculator Helper Methods
Solution - Challenge Postal Calculator Helper Methods
Solution - Mega Challenge Casino
Lesson 35 - Manipulating Strings
Challenge 9 - Phun With Strings
Solution - Challenge Phun With Strings
Lesson 36 - Introduction to Classes and Objects
Challenge - Hero Monster Classes Part 1
Solution - Hero Monster Classes Part 1
Challenge - Hero Monster Classes Part 2
Solution - Challenge Hero Monster Classes Part 2
Lesson 37 - Creating Class Files Creating Cohesive Classes and Code Navigation
Lesson 38 - Understanding Object References and Object Lifetime
Lesson 39 - Understanding the .NET Framework and Compilation
Lesson 40 - Namespaces and Using Directives
Lesson 41 - Creating Class Libraries and Adding References to Assemblies
Lesson 42 - Accessibility Modifiers, Fields and Properties
Lesson 43 - Creating Constructor Methods
Lesson 44 - Naming Conventions for Identifiers
Lesson 45 - Static vs Instance Members
Challenge 10 - Challenge Simple Darts
Solution - Challenge Simple Darts
Lesson 46 - Working with the List Collection
Lesson 47 - Object Initializers
Lesson 48 - Collection Initializers
Lesson 49 - Working with the Dictionary Collection
Lesson 50 - Looping with the foreach Iteration Statement
Lesson 51 - Implicitly-Typed Variables with the var Keyword
Challenge 11 - Challenge Student Courses
Solution - Challenge Student Courses
Lesson 53 - Working with Enumerations
Lesson 54 - Understanding the switch() Statement
Lesson 55 - First Pass at the Separation of Concerns Principle
Lesson 56 - Understanding Exception Handling
Lesson 57 - Understanding Global Exception Handling
Lesson 58 - Understanding Custom Exceptions
Lesson 59 - Creating a Database in Visual Studio
Lesson 60 - Creating an Entity Data Model
Lesson 61 - Displaying the DbSet Result in an ASP.NET GridView
Lesson 62 - Implementing a Button Command in a GridView
Lesson 63 - Using a Tools-Centric Approach to Building a Database Application
Lesson 64 - Using a Maintenance-Driven Approach to Building a Database Application
Lesson 65 - Creating a New Instance of an Entity and Persisting it to the Database
Lesson 66 - Package Management with NuGet
Lesson 67 - NuGet No-Commit Workflow
Lesson 68 - Introduction the Twitter Bootstrap CSS Framework
Lesson 69 - Mapping Enum Types to Entity Properties in the Framework Designer
Lesson 70 - Deploying the App to Microsoft Azure Web Services Web Apps
Papa Bob's Mega Solution Part 1 - Setting up the Solution
Papa Bob's Mega Solution Part 2 - Adding an Order to the Database
Papa Bob's Mega Solution Part 3 - Passing an Order from the Presentation Layer
Papa Bob's Mega Solution Part 4 - Creating the Order Form
Papa Bob's Mega Solution Part 5 - Adding Enums
Papa Bob's Mega Solution Part 6 - Creating an Order with Validation
Papa Bob's Mega Solution Part 7 - Calculating the Order Price
Papa Bob's Mega Solution Part 8 - Displaying the Price to the User
Papa Bob's Mega Solution Part 9 - Creating the Order Management Page