Visual Studio Hacks

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Chapter 6, Speed Hacks

#50 Define Templates for Generating Code

HACK

Again, you can see the class file that was generated in this example was

named Customers.cs. Taking a look at this class, you can see that the xsd.exe

tool created a class named

Customers that inherits from the DataSet class,

thus creating a strongly typed DataSet object:

[Serializable( )]

[System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute("code")]

[System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThrough( )]

[System.ComponentModel.ToolboxItem(true)]

public class Customers : DataSet {

Including all of the code here would be excessive—the generated class is

more than 600 lines long, but it is important to note that the Customers

class is not the only class contained in this file. The following classes were

also generated:

CustomerDataTable

CustomerRow

CustomerRowChangeEvent

CustomerRowChangeEventHandler

I would encourage you to examine the generated classes further to better

understand how strongly typed DataSets work.

—Dave Donaldson

HACK

#50

Define Templates for Generating Code Hack #50

Whenever possible, take a shortcut. You can use the CodeSmith custom tool

to generate code from templates that you create.

CodeSmith is a popular .NET code generation tool. The normal CodeSmith

application is a Windows Forms application that allows you to create tem-

plates in an ASP.NET-like syntax, and then generate code using those tem-

plates. The templates can be based ...