Visual Studio Hacks

Create a File Template #88

Chapter 12, Extending Visual Studio

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HACK

Create Your Own Template

Visual Studio provides a number of built-in templates for nearly all of the

file types that are involved in the different types of .NET applications. One

hack opportunity is to take one of the existing templates and just modify it

to your needs. The other opportunity is to create one from scratch, which is

what I will be covering in this hack.

Visual Studio .NET 2003 Is Missing a Template

Actually, in this hack, I’d like to make up for a hole in Visual Studio. In

addition to the Visual Studio IDE, Microsoft also offers a free tool for web

development called Microsoft ASP.NET Web Matrix, or Web Matrix for

short. The Web Matrix is a small tool that is not as fully featured as Visual

Studio. Visual Studio is able to create many more file types than the Web

Matrix. So you’d think that Visual Studio’s set of templates would definitely

be the superset of file types. Not quite. There’s an HTTP Handler file type

that appears in the Web Matrix Add New File dialog (see Figure 12-2).

Strangely enough, this is missing from Visual Studio. So let’s make up for

this disparity.

Figure 12-2. ASP.NET Web Matrix Add New File dialog