One liner for If string is not null or empty else

Question

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

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


        

Answer 1

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();

Answer 2

This may help:

public string NonBlankValueOf(string strTestString)
{
    return String.IsNullOrEmpty(strTestString)? "0": strTestString;
}

Answer 3

There is a null coalescing operator (??), but it would not handle empty strings.

If you were only interested in dealing with null strings, you would use it like

string output = somePossiblyNullString ?? "0";

For your need specifically, there is the conditional operator bool expr ? true_value : false_value that you can use to simplify if/else statement blocks that set or return a value.

string output = string.IsNullOrEmpty(someString) ? "0" : someString;

Answer 4

Old question, but thought I'd add this to help out,

#if DOTNET35
bool isTrulyEmpty = String.IsNullOrEmpty(s) || s.Trim().Length == 0;
#else
bool isTrulyEmpty = String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(s) ;
#endif

Answer 5

You could use the ternary operator:

return string.IsNullOrEmpty(strTestString) ? "0" : strTestString

FooTextBox.Text = string.IsNullOrEmpty(strFoo) ? "0" : strFoo;

Answer 6

You can achieve this with pattern matching with the switch expression in C#8/9

FooTextBox.Text = strFoo switch
{
    { Length: >0 } s => s, // If the length of the string is greater than 0 
    _ => "0" // Anything else
};