Elegant one-line way to use TryParse

I don't know how about you, but for me using int.TryParse() always feel somehow not right, resulting in an ugly three lines of code to do just one operation: int value; if (!int.TryParse(valueToParseFromString, out value) value = 0; If you are looking for cleaner code to satisfy your inner pedant you can use this one-line solution instead: int value = int.TryParse(valueToParseFromString, out value) ? value : 0; It will parse the valueToParseFromString and on success assign it to the value variable, otherwise it will return 0.

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Sitecore released 60-days trial developer license!

Finally, Sitecore made an excellent marketing move to make the developers' life easier - thanks to the Developer Trial Program from now on it is possible to get a free trial developer license for 60 days to work on it at home. Well done, Sitecore team! We have been waiting for this for so long! So far the access to Sitecore software was very restricted. Because Sitecore to run requires a valid license file and the developers are not allowed to use their client licenses, it was really tricky to be able to experiment with Sitecore instance at home. To…

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How would I learn to code if I could start once again

A few days ago my friend asked me a question how would I learn web development if I could start once again with my current experience and what I would do differently which inspired me to write this post. After a few years of experience as a .NET developer, I have plenty of reflections about that and I hope some of them would be a good starting point for beginners. In this article, I will assume that you want to focus on back-end development of web applications and object oriented programming. Pick only one technology and start with a good book…

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Sitecore 8.2.1 on Azure PaaS Web Apps part 2: ARM Templates

As I already mentioned in the first part of the tutorial there are two ways to deploy Sitecore 8.2.1 to Azure Web Apps. In this post, I am going to talk about the second option which is installation using Azure Resource Manager Templates. Sitecore 8.2.1 ARM Deployment step by step: Install the latest version of Azure PowerShell SDK. Run PowerShell console and execute the above lines: Set-ExecutionPolicy AllSigned # Install the Azure Resource Manager modules from the PowerShell Gallery Install-Module AzureRM # Install the Azure Service Management module from the PowerShell Gallery Install-Module Azure I experienced an issue: "some modules…

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Sitecore 8.2.1 on Azure PaaS Web Apps part 1: Installation using Azure Marketplace

In Sitecore 8.2 since update 1, Sitecore provided out of the box support for Azure Platform as a Service deployments. Before Sitecore 8.2.1, it was possible to deploy Sitecore using Cloud Services which required custom deployment and had a few drawbacks like no support for some Sitecore modules like WFFM or EXM, burdensome maintenance, long deployments time and requirement of integration with third-party services because of lack of automatic scaling. Since Sitecore 8.2.1 there are possible two ways of deployments: One-click deployment option using Azure Marketplace Powershell based deployment using Azure Resource Manager Templates In this post, I am going…

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