C#

Problem Statement: Extracting extended file properties, such as the Media Created Date, is necessary for certain applications. Utilizing the Microsoft.WindowsAPICodePack.Shell namespace facilitates this task efficiently.

Approach: Utilize the ShellObject class from the WindowsAPICodePack.Shell namespace to access extended file properties. Specifically, retrieve the Media Created Date using the System.Media.DateEncoded property.

using Microsoft.WindowsAPICodePack.Shell;

ShellObject shell = ShellObject.FromParsingName(path);
var mediaCreatedDate = shell.Properties.System.Media.DateEncoded;

Explanation: This code utilizes the ShellObject class to access extended file properties. It fetches the Media Created Date of a file specified by its path using the System.Media.DateEncoded property, providing crucial metadata for various applications.

Further resources

• c# - How can I extract the date from the "Media Created" column of a video file? - Stack Overflow
• Wolfgang Ziegler - Reading File Attributes And Metadata Using C# (wolfgang-ziegler.com)

C# is a strongly-typed language. It means we must declare the type of a variable that indicates the kind of values it is going to store, such as integer, float, decimal, text, 

Additional reading at Data types in C# (tutorialsteacher.com)

C# includes specialized classes that store series of values or objects are called collections.

There are two types of collections available in C#: non-generic collections and generic collections.

The System.Collections namespace contains the non-generic collection types and System.Collections.Generic namespace includes generic collection types.

Additional reading at C# Generic & Non-generic Collections (tutorialsteacher.com)

In C#, a string is a series of characters that is used to represent text. It can be a character, a word or a long passage surrounded with the double quotes ". The following are string literals.

// String Literal Examples
"S"
"String"
"This is a string."

To filter out nullable strings and obtain only non-null strings, you can use LINQ Where method along with a null check. Here's an example:

IEnumerable<string?> nullableStrings //

List<string> nonNullStringsList = nullableStrings
    .Where(s => s != null) // Filter out null values
    .Select(s => s!)       // Convert nullable strings to non-nullable
    .ToList();             // Convert IEnumerable to List

1. We use LINQ extension methods Where to filter out null values and Select to convert nullable strings to non-nullable strings (string! indicates a non-nullable reference type in C# 8.0 and later).
2. Finally, we use ToList() to convert the filtered enumerable to a List<string>.

The JsonSerializer.Serialize converts the value of a specified type into a JSON string.

using System.Text.Json;

var user = new User("Krish Jackon", "female", new MyDate(1985, 03, 30));

var json = JsonSerializer.Serialize(user);
Console.WriteLine(json);

The JsonSerializer.Deserialize parses the text representing a single JSON value into an instance of a specified type.

using System.Text.Json;

string json = @"{""Name"":""Krish Jackon"", ""Gender"":""female"",
    ""DateOfBirth"":{""year"":1985,""month"":03,""day"":30}}";

var user = JsonSerializer.Deserialize<User>(json);

Resources to deserialize to dynamic object

• How to Deserialize JSON Into Dynamic Object in C# - Code Maze (code-maze.com)
• Querying JSON with dynamic (newtonsoft.com)

In C#, to compare two strings ignoring case sensitivity, you can use the string.Equals method with StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase as shown below:

string val = "aStringValue";
bool isEqual = string.Equals(val, "astringvalue", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase);

This code snippet compares the val string with "astringvalue" regardless of case sensitivity and returns a boolean indicating if they are equal.

For more details and discussions about comparing strings in C# while ignoring case, you can refer to this Stack Overflow thread: Comparing two strings ignoring case in C#.

The provided source code defines a simple DependencyProvider class responsible for managing dependencies using .NET Core's built-in dependency injection system. The class includes a method to retrieve required services based on their interfaces.

public static class DependencyProvider
{
   private static IServiceProvider Provider()
   {
      var services = new ServicesCollection();
      services.AddSingleton<IClient, Client>();
      return services.BuildServiceProvider();
   }

   public static T GetRequiredService<T>() where T : notnull
   {
      var provider = Provider();
      return provider.GetRequiredService<T>();
   }
}

To use this DependencyProvider, you can retrieve instances of required services as shown below:

readonly IClient _client = DependencyProvider.GetRequiredService<IClient>();

To add IConfiguration to the service collection, you can use the IServiceCollection interface. First, create a ServiceCollection instance, then use the AddSingleton method to add IConfiguration, passing in your configuration object _config.

IConfigurationBuilder builder = new ConfigurationBuilder()
    .SetBasePath(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory)
    .AddJsonFile("appsettings.json");

IConfiguration configuration = builder.Build();

IServiceCollection services = new ServiceCollection();
services.AddSingleton<IConfiguration>(configuration);

This setup is particularly useful for scenarios like unit testing background services, as discussed in this Stack Overflow thread: Unit testing a .NET Core background service.