DotNetKicks.com - Stories tagged with T4

ASP.NET MVC Localization: Generate resource files and localized views

Sun, 15 May 2011 23:18:16 GMT

ASP.NET MVC Localization: Generate resource files and localized views using custom templates

Entity Framework and T4: Generate Query Objects on the fly, part 1

Sun, 08 May 2011 23:10:32 GMT

Generate Query Objects on the fly for your Entity Framework entities using T4 templates. Don't worry about LINQ, let the objects do all the work for you.

Entity Framework: Making changes to the T4 Templats

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 17:09:16 GMT

Taking a look at how Entity Framework uses T4 Templates (Text Template Transformation Toolkit) when building out the entity model. We will first learn how EF is using the templates, we will then learn how to view and access these templates and finally we will take a look at how to modify these templates to meet your own specific needs.

Repository and Unit of Work T4 Template for Entity Framework

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 11:22:37 GMT

Two weeks ago I wrote the Revisiting the Repository and Unit of Work Patterns with Entity Framework post. One thing that I thought would be nice was to have an automatic code generation that will help me to build these patterns without sweating. So I sat down and created a T4 Template to auto generate the same patterns.

Entity Framework T4 Enhancements Part 1, Generate an IDatabase

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:42:51 GMT

This post is part of a series on customizing the Entity Framework T4 templates I have been using EF4 for a little while now, and have been taking advantage of the code-generation extensibility afforded to us by T4 templates. This series of posts will describe the enhancements I have made to the default T4 template, and how you can take advantage of this functionality yourself. .Part 1 - Generate an IDatabase interface to represent your Data Context

Reading a Xml File in T4 Templates

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 16:09:24 GMT

After I wrote the post about the use of T4 templates in EF4, I played with them for a while (not in EF but generally with T4 templates). In an old project that I've created almost 3 years ago which automated the use of lookup tables I had an enum. That enum was meant to be the connection between an Xml node names and was heavily used in the application.

T4CSS: A T4 Template for .Less CSS With Compression

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:01:20 GMT

Pain is often a great motivator for invention, unless you become dull to the pain. I think CSS is one of those cases where there's a lot of pain that we as web developers often take in stride. Fortunately not everyone accepts that pain and efforts such as LESS are born. As the home page states However, sometimes I just want to have static CSS files. So I decided to write a T4 template for .less. Simply drop it in a folder that contains .less files and it will generate a .css file for each .less file.

T4 Toolbox Offers Alternate LINQ to SQL Class Generator: Explained

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:30:34 GMT

If you aren't up with the know, T4 Templates or the Text Template Transformation Toolkit is a Microsoft template-driven code generation toolkit baked right into Visual Studio 2008 (and available in Visual Studio 2005 as an additional download) which allows you to do some pretty cool stuff in the way of code generation - that being generating classes, sql scripts, MVC and/or Dynamic Data templates, or anything you like really. It can plug in and read database information quickly and has gained a lot more traction over the last year or so with the adoption by ASP.NET MVC and Dynamic Data really driving it's name, however unfortunately with the lack of great IDE support, which I'm hoping might change a little come Visual Studio 2010 there is no in-built syntax highlighting or easy way to get started with using it (eg. no "Add new item"). However, it's a great system and can provide loads of benefit out of the box.

Custom Templating Library

Fri, 15 May 2009 04:01:41 GMT

This article presents the Custom Templates Library. This library provides easy access to the text transformation features of T4 from within custom applications.

Template based code generation with T4 from custom applications.

Fri, 15 May 2009 04:00:58 GMT

Generate source code from custom applications by using the Text Template Transformation Toolkit of VS 2008.

How to modify the T4 templates used by Sharp Architecture

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:16:02 GMT

Taking a look at how you can modify the T4 templates which are used to change the default generation behavior of Sharp Architecture

T4 Templates: A Quick-Start Guide for ASP.NET MVC Developers

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:31:23 GMT

"As mentioned in our recent blog post on the ASP.NET MVC Release Candidate, our code-generation features (namely, Add Controller and Add View) now use the T4 (Text Template Transformation Toolkit) templating technology behind the scenes. Because users can customize the templates to a great extent, we wanted to make a post to bring everyone up to speed on T4."

Using T4 Command-Line Parameters - Generating NHibernate Magic Strings

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:08:25 GMT

Describes how to use T4 (TextTransform) command line parameters (in this case to generate the 'magic strings' used by NHibernate ICriteria queries).

T4 (Text Template Transformation Toolkit) Code Generation - Best Kept

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:16:17 GMT

Very handy stuff indeed

Creating complex code generators

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 19:36:56 GMT

This article is a part of a series that introduces code generation using C# and Text Templates (also known as T4 Templates) in Visual Studio; explains how to create reusable templates and combine them in complex code generators.

Creating reusable code generation templates

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:19:28 GMT

Debugging Code Generation Files

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:18:31 GMT

Troubleshooting Code Generation Errors

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 03:57:06 GMT

Creating your first code generator

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 03:56:16 GMT

This is the first post in a series that introduces code generation using C# and Text Templates (also known as T4 Templates) in Visual Studio; explains how to create reusable templates and combine them in complex code generators.

Extending T4: <#@ xsd #> directive

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 08:33:46 GMT

This article describes a custom T4 directive processor for converting XML schema definitions into .NET classes, which allows using strongly-typed code to extract information from various XML files. In particular, this simplifies creating custom T4 code generation templates for LINQ to SQL .dbml files and ADO.NET Entity Framework .edmx files. The article includes links to ready to use xsd directive processor and sample source code.

T4 template for generating SQL view from C# enumeration

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 10:15:23 GMT

Database tables often contain columns that store "codes", or values with special meaning. In application code, these special values can be encapsulated as enumerations. This article demonstrates how to use T4 code generation templates and Visual Studio CodeModel API to generate SQL views that encapsulate the special values for use in SQL code.

Test runner for T4 unit tests

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:05:15 GMT

This post shows how to create unit tests that run during T4 template transformation. This approach allows creating automated tests for template code that relies on specific capabilities of a T4 host, such as access to Visual Studio extensibility APIs. The post includes a ready to use test runner for T4 unit tests.

T4 Architecture

Mon, 19 May 2008 01:56:21 GMT

This article provides an in-depth look at the architecture of T4 template transformation process, discusses some constraints that limit template design, describes techniques that can be used to work around these limitations and points out some (sometimes undocumented) mechanisms for making your T4 templates more powerful.

T4 Template Design

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 07:31:49 GMT

This article discusses design challenges developers face as complexity of their T4 templates increases; defines qualities of a reusable T4 templates; discusses techniques that can be used to achieve these qualities and compares their pros and cons.

How to generate multiple outputs from single T4 template

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 06:32:09 GMT

For some code generation tasks, like generating SELECT stored procedures based on indexes of a given database table, number of output artifacts may not be known upfront. Because T4 was designed to generate a single output file from one template file, developers are forced to generate multiple code artifacts in the same source file. This conflicts with the widely used practice of using one source file per code artifact. This article demonstrates how to work around this limitation of T4, generate multiple files from a single template and automatically add them to a Visual Studio project.