Elegant way to avoid NullReferenceException in C#

Question

I want to do this

var path = HttpContext.Current.Request.ApplicationPath;

If any of the Properties along the way is null, i want path to be

Answer 1

The shortest and most performant path is to perform the null check against every level. For reuse you can wrap that code up into a helper function or perhaps an extension method. This will let you safely access it via that function, but still consistently perform the null check.

Example:

public void DoSomething()
{
  // Get the path, which may be null, using the extension method
  var contextPath = HttpContext.Current.RequestPath;
}


public static class HttpContextExtensions
{
  public static string RequestPath(this HttpContext context)
  {
    if (context == null || context.Request == null)
    {
      return default(string);
    }

    return context.Request.ApplicationPath;
  }
}