Creating a shortcut class in C#

Question

I'm working on making a shortcut... manager, if you will. It will be reused throughout the rest of the application for registering types that can later be resolved into views. I have a rule that the shortcuts need to be able to be grouped by their different purposes throughout the application. For instance, if I have shortcuts for car related stuff and then shortcuts for truck related stuff I would need them sorted.

This is what I have come up thus far. Thoughts, comments, and suggestions on changing this to make it better would be appreciated.

public static Shortcuts
{
    public enum ShortcutType
    {
        Car, Truck
    }

    static Shortcuts
    {
        AllShortcuts = new Dictionary<string, Type>();
        CarShortcuts = new Dictionary<string, Type>();
        TruckShortcuts = new Dictionary<string, Type>();
    }

    public static Dictionary<string, Type> AllShortcuts { get; private set; }
    public static Dictionary<string, Type> CarShortcuts { get; private set; }
    public static Dictionary<string, Type> TruckShortcuts { get; private set; }

    public static void AddShortcut(KeyValuePair<string, Type> kvp, ShortcutType type)
    {
        switch(type)
        {
            case ShortcutType.Car:
                CarShortcuts.Add(kvp.Key, kvp.Value);
                break;
            case ShortcutType.Truck:
                TruckShortcuts.Add(kvp.Key, kvp.Value);
                break;
        }

        if (!AllShortcuts.Contains(kvp))
        {
            AllShortcuts.Add(kvp.Key, kvp.Value);
        }
    }

    public static void RemoveShortcut(KeyValuePair<string, Type> kvp, ShortcutType type)
    {
        switch(type)
        {
            case ShortcutType.Car:
                if (CarShortcuts.Contains(kvp))
                {
                    CarShortcuts.Remove(kvp.Key);
                }
                break;
            case ShortcutType.Truck:
                if (TruckShortcuts.Contains(kvp))
                {
                    TruckShortcuts.Remove(kvp.Key);
                }
                break;
        }

        if (AllShortcuts.Contains(kvp))
        {
            AllShortcuts.Remove(kvp.Key);
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

Here are some thoughts to ponder:

• If you are to access a car short cut, then you would need to know:
  (i) that you want to get a car short cut, and
  (ii) you would have to call the relevant property, and
  (iii) presumably you’d have to enumerate till you found the shortcut of your choice.
• There seems to be some duplication: values are being stored in at least two dictionaries:
  (i) either the car or truck short-cut dictionary and
  (ii) the Allshortcuts dictionary – is there are reason for this duplication? If you don’t know where the short cut is, then there are only two possible choices: it’s either in the truck dictionary or the car dictionary. You could possibly write a method if you really wanted which searches both the dictionaries and returns the appropriate value.
• Since you have access directly to the dictionaries as properties – then why have a AddShortCut and RemoveShortCut method – you can directly access the dictionary via the property. Sure an OOP diehard might insist on you using a getter method – but you still have one location, one point of all when accessing those dictionaries via the property.
• Is there any reason to have a static class?

Something like this may be easier.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Sockets;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace practiceConsole
{///
    internal class Program
    {
        #region public properties and variables

        private Dictionary<string, Type> _truckShortCuts = new Dictionary<string, Type>();

        public Dictionary<string, Type> TruckShortCuts
        {
            get { return _truckShortCuts; }
            set { _truckShortCuts = value; }
        }

        private Dictionary<string, Type> _carShortcuts = new Dictionary<string, Type>();

        public Dictionary<string, Type> CarShortCuts
        {
            get { return _carShortcuts; }
            set { _carShortcuts = value; }
        }

        #endregion public properties and variables

        private static void Main(string[] args)
        {
        }

        public Type GetShortCut(string key)
        {
            Type truckValue;
            if (TruckShortCuts.TryGetValue(key, out truckValue))
            {
                return truckValue;
            }
            else
            {
                // couldn't find the key in trucks.
                // so let's search for it in Cars

                Type carValue;
                if (CarShortCuts.TryGetValue(key, out carValue))
                {
                    return carValue;
                }
                else
                {
                    // couldn't find the key.
                    // throw exception
                    throw new KeyNotFoundException("\nCouldn't find the key in either the car or trucks shortcut dictionaries, my regrets.");
                }
            }
        }
    }
}