Is there a more elegant way of adding an item to a Dictionary<> safely?

As usual John Skeet gets in there with lighting speed with the right answer, but interestingly you could also have written your SafeAdd as an Extension Method on IDictionary.

public static void SafeAdd(this IDictionary<K, T>. dict, K key, T value)...

What's wrong with...

dict[key] = view;

It'll automatically add the key if it's non-existent.

Just use the indexer - it will overwrite if it's already there, but it doesn't have to be there first:

Dictionary<string, object> currentViews = new Dictionary<string, object>();
currentViews["Customers"] = "view1";
currentViews["Customers"] = "view2";
currentViews["Employees"] = "view1";
currentViews["Reports"] = "view1";

Basically use Add if the existence of the key indicates a bug (so you want it to throw) and the indexer otherwise. (It's a bit like the difference between casting and using as for reference conversions.)

If you're using C# 3 and you have a distinct set of keys, you can make this even neater:

var currentViews = new Dictionary<string, object>()
{
    { "Customers", "view2" },
    { "Employees", "view1" },
    { "Reports", "view1" },
};

That won't work in your case though, as collection initializers always use Add which will throw on the second Customers entry.

simply

dict[key] = view;

From the MSDN documentation of Dictionary.Item

The value associated with the specified key. If the specified key is not found, a get operation throws a KeyNotFoundException, and a set operation creates a new element with the specified key.

My emphasis