Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman/archive/2013/12/16/c-extension-methods-again.aspx
My latest Pluralsight course, C# Extension Methods has just gone live.
It’s an in-depth look at extension methods, which have been around since .NET 3.5. They’re the power behind LINQ and ASP.NET MVC’s HtmlHelper, but don’t tend to be used widely outside of the framework methods.
Which is a shame. Extension methods are a powerful language feature which can add a lot to your own solution. To start with, as an enabler for some key scenarios, like:
- extending a 3rd-party codebase
- adding to a hierarchy without inheritance or composition
- adding aggregation without collection classes
- adding functionality to every object
- making common code highly visible in Visual Studio
Writing and using extension methods is easy, and the course aims to cover everything you need to know about them.
It’s split over five modules, starting with the theory and finishing by building up a framework library of extension methods that can save time and add quality to any project:
- Module 1: Introducing Extension Methods
- Writing and using
- With types, interfaces & collections
- What scenarios they enable
- Modules 2 & 3: Advanced Extension Methods
- Restrictions with extension methods
- How .NET implements extensions
- Using different extension methods with different build configurations
- Modules 4 & 5: Extension Method Library
- Core, Reflection, Entity Framework
- WCF, WebAPI, ASP.NET MVC
This is my last course for the year, but I’ll be starting on the next one soon, which will be all about message queues.
