Temperature Conversion Revisited

I recently completed another ASP.NET project and learned about the app_code folder, which lets you share code between pages. It's slightly similar to the #include directive in Classic ASP, but a lot more structured. I couldn't find much good documentation on it, so most of what I've learned has been through experimentation.

Any files placed into the app_code folder are automatically available from any page in your web application, so you can write: myNamespace.myClass.myFunction(someVariable) and the magic will happen. Alternatively, you can add Imports myNamespace.myClass in the top of your page and call myFunction without all the prefixing.

Though I'm still not a big fan of ASP.NET, this app_code thing is pretty slick and it's inspired me to write more reusable code. I had previously written a collection of functions for temperature conversion, which I've since grown unhappy with after reading Code Complete 2.0 by Steve McConnell because I named my functions like this: CelsiusToFahrenheit, instead of like this: FahrenheitFromCelsius.

I had been planning to write more conversion functions for various units of measurement, but was never satisfied enough with how it was turning out to make it publically available. Besides learning to appreciate ASP.NET, I'm also learning to appreciate object-oriented programming. This whole namespace/class combination with app_code seems to be appropriately suited for doing unit of measurement conversion.

So here's my plan. I've defined a namespace called UOM, which is the manufacturing industry standard abbreviation for unit of measure. Each type of measurement will be a class: temperature, distance, volume, mass, etc. Each class will accept string input so that you can specify both the numeric quantity and the unit of measure simultaneously. The class will use the specified unit of measure to convert values to a common unit of measure, and be able to return values in any equivalent unit of measure.

VB.NET

1. Imports UOM
3. Dim outside as Temperature
4. outside = New Temperature("10 C")
5. Response.Write(outside.getFahrenheit) 'Displays "50"

And so I proudly announce the release of the first installment in the UOM namespace: UOM.Temperature, which handles Celsius, Delisle, Fahrenheit, Kelvin, Newton, Rankine, Réaumur, and Rømer temperature scales.

Download the VB.NET source code for UOM.Temperature from Snipplr.com