Four Little Known, Helpful Methods, Properties, and Features for ASP.NET Developers

The .NET Framework is big. Really big. The System.Web assembly, which contains the guts of ASP.NET, is comprised of nearly 2,000 types, over 23,000 methods, and more than 12,500 properties. And that's not counting any of the functionality added to ASP.NET since version 2.0. ASP.NET AJAX, the ListView control, Dynamic Data, URL routing, and other features add hundreds of new types and thousands of new methods and properties.

Given the size and scope of the .NET Framework and ASP.NET even there are certain to be dark corners for even the most experienced developers. There are certain classes, methods, and properties in the .NET Framework that every ASP.NET developer is intimately familiar with: the Request.QueryString collection; the Session object; Pageobject properties like IsValid and IsPostBack. Yet even in these familiar classes there are very useful and very helpful properties, methods, and features that are less widely known. Heck, I've been building ASP.NET applications and writing about ASP.NET functionality and features full time since 2001, and once or twice a month I still stumble across an unknown feature or a helpful property or method buried in some dark corner of the framework.

This article lists four helpful methods, properties, and features in the .NET Framework that, in my experience, are not widely known to ASP.NET developers. Read here