Just found of a new method within the SPListCollection object that season WSS 3.0 devs will appreciate a lot. In WSS 3.0, there’s not really a neat way to get an instance of a list that might not exist.

I usually use SPList myList = web.Lists[listName]; but it throws a null reference error if the list is not there. Looping through the SPListItemCollection object is usually how we’ll check for a list instance, but I think its a waste of resources.

In SharePoint 2010, a new method “TryGetList” is implemented to get the list and it throws a null refernce if it doesn’t find it.

using (SPWeb web = site.RootWeb)
{
 SPList myList = web.Lists.TryGetList("My List Name");

 if (myList != null)
 {
  ...
 }
}

I’m excited to get my hands dirty in SP2010, I hope incoming projects will be based on it.

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