Loading image while waiting

Sometimes we want to show kind of a "waiting" image while a page is been rendered or while we are waiting for a server response.
It's easy, we just need: some css style, a .gif image, a javascript.
Following code is supporting cross-browsing:

The css classes:

.loadingDiv 
{ 
    z-index: 1000; 
    position:relative; 
    top:1200px; 
    float: left; 
    width:100%; 
    background-color:White; 
    opacity: 0.7; 
    padding-top:300px; 
    margin-top:-1200px; 
  } 
 
.loadingImage 
{ 
    margin-left: auto; 
    margin-right:auto; 
    padding-bottom:600px; 
} 

Here are the div and the img element. Place them in the top of the page inside the body tag:

<div id="loading" class="loadingDiv"> 
    <img id="imgMainLoadImage" src="../images/loading.gif" border="0" alt="" class="loadingImage" /> 
</div> 

Here is the script. Place it just below the div, no matter if you have any other block of scripts in other sections in the page.

<script> 
    var ld = (document.all); 
    var imgL = (document.all); 
    var ns4 = document.layers; 
    var ns6 = document.getElementById && !document.all; 
    var ie4 = document.all; 
    if (ns4) { 
  ld = document.loading; 
        imgL = document.imgMainLoadImage; 
    } 
    else if (ns6) { 
        ld = document.getElementById("loading").style; 
        imgL = document.getElementById("imgMainLoadImage").style; 
    } 
    else if (ie4) { 
        ld = document.all.loading.style; 
        imgL = document.all.imgMainLoadImage.style; 
    } 
 
    function init() { 
        if (ns4) { 
            ld.visibility = "hidden"; 
        } 
        else if (ns6 || ie4) { 
            ld.display = "none"; 
        } 
    } 
 
    function ShowLoadingImage() { 
        if (ns4) { 
            ld.visibility = "visible"; 
        } 
        else if (ns6 || ie4) { 
            ld.display = "block"; 
        } 
    } 
</script> 

The last and not least part is to call the javascript function in the "onload" event in the body.
I have used this in masterpages as well as content pages.

<body onload="init();"> 

IsNumeric in C#

I can still remember when I used to use the Visual Basic function (was it a function?)

IsNumeric(...)

in which I was able to know if an entry data was or not a numeric value.
Well, we are not going to find such as kind of function in any library in C# (at least until framework 4), so I wrote a quick version in C#.
Here is the utility function:

        private bool IsNumeric(string strEntry) 
        { 
            if (strEntry == null) 
            { 
                return false; 
            } 
            else 
            { 
                Regex obj = new Regex("[^0-9]"); 
                return !obj.IsMatch(strEntry) && (strEntry != string.Empty); 
            } 
        } 

Don't forget to import the following library:

using System.Text.RegularExpressions; 

Read Simple Text from .txt

Recently I was asked to create a portion on a web application. The basic requirement was to make the app able to read simple text from a text file (.txt) in a configurable location. The path would be located in the web.config and might be both a Web (URL) or physical (windows-style) address. In addition the file may or not exist... so here is the code I wrote:

        private string GetTextFromFile() 
        { 
            string returnValue = string.Empty; 
 
            try 
            { 
                string path = Convert.ToString(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["keyTextFile"]); 
                StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); 
 
                // make the difference between Url and Windows-style Path 
                if (path.Contains("http") || path.Contains(Path.AltDirectorySeparatorChar)) 
                { 
                    path = path.TrimEnd('/'); 
                    path = sb.Append(path).Append("//").Append("theFile.txt").ToString(); 
 
                    HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create(path); 
                    WebResponse response = request.GetResponse(); 
                    Stream stream = response.GetResponseStream(); 
                    StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream); 
                    returnValue = reader.ReadToEnd(); 
                } 
                else 
                { 
                    path = Path.Combine(path, "theFile.txt"); 
 
                    if (File.Exists(path)) 
                    { 
                        using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(path)) 
                        { 
                            returnValue = sr.ReadToEnd(); 
                        } 
                    } 
                } 
            } 
            catch 
            { 
                returnValue = string.Empty; 
            } 
 
            return returnValue; 
        }