CODEWITHSUNDEEP
configurationt4
Simon Rigby
Simon Rigby

Reputation: 1786

Interactive T4 Templates

I'm using a set of T4 templates in most of my MVC projects that create a set of Managers (think repositories), ViewModels and Extensions - utility extension methods such as ToModel(), ToViewModel() and ToSelectList(). So far so good. An enormous amount of basic 'plumbing' code is now written for me.

What I'd really like is an ability to configure variables that are used within those templates from an external file and then have the template use that file when executing.

I know I can run another T4 template from within another, but I can't find a way to add configuration in a separate file.

Presently, I include an 'Entity' table in my database and use that for configuration. It works but it feels dirty to have this in the database.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 315

Answers (1)

Frank
Frank

Reputation: 2198

T4 is just C#/VB.Net code in the end, you can pretty much use any libraries you want. If you want an external configuration file you could use json.net and a simple json file in your project. At the start of your template, use the file io in the framework to read your json files contents, pass that to json.net and then extract the parameters you need. The most common way to use json.net is to serialize and deserialize classes but it also gives you access to a lower json dictionary like object that you can use linq to get any data you need from the json.

But remember there is always more then one way to solve a problem and this is a problem I have been trying to solve for a while. My preferred solution is an extension that I have created called T4 Awesome. My extension takes a totally different approach to using T4 for scaffolding inside Visual Studio. I add multiple tool windows and context menus around the IDE to make managing and using T4 templates faster and easier. I have a dynamic UI that lets you define simple parameters and pass them to your templates and also give you much more control over the final output files location. Feel free to check it out. And full disclaimer, I charge for this extension but have a free community version that should be able to do what you want.

Upvotes: 1

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