by Vahid
11. June 2010 05:56
till yesterday i had never used T4 for a real problem solving. i knew what it is but i did not know how great and easy it is.
in my current scenario i have a database table which contains options available for each property of 30 available properties of items to be added to the system. the table has almost 500 records. in the item registration page i had to create a structure like this for each property:
<div id="div1" runat="server" class="row">
<asp:Label ID="SmartLabel13" runat="server" AssociatedControlID="" Text="Title of the property"></asp:Label>
<asp:DropDown ID="SmartDropDown1" runat="server">
<asp:ListItem Selected="True" Text="-----------" Value="">
<asp:ListItem Selected="True" Text="option 1" Value="option 1 value">
<asp:ListItem Selected="True" Text="option 2" Value="option 2 value">
.
.
.
.
<asp:ListItem Selected="True" Text="option n" Value="option n value">
</asp:ListItem>
</asp:DropDown>
</div>
creating 50 of these snippet and adding almost 12 list item for each of them along with setting the control names and property title and also AssociatedControlID of each would have taken me at least a day. i thought i could benefit from T4(Text Template Transformation Toolkit which is used for code generation) to save myself some time. so i started creating a T4 file to do this and vala… 15 minutes later i had it done. i have to say that, it was the first time that i actually was using T4. i cannot believe how easy it is to use it. the following few lines of code saved me at least a day by generating around 1000 lines of code:
<#@ template language="C#" debug="True" #>
<#@ output extension="txt" #>
<#@ assembly name="System.Core" #>
<#@ assembly name="System.Data" #>
<#@ import namespace="System" #>
<#@ import namespace="System.IO" #>
<#@ import namespace="System.Diagnostics" #>
<#@ import namespace="System.Linq" #>
<#@ import namespace="System.Collections" #>
<#@ import namespace="System.Collections.Generic" #>
<#@ import namespace="System.Data.SqlClient" #>
<#
string catName=string.Empty;
int i=50;
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection cn=new System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection("data source=.\\sqlexpress;integrated security=true;database=Irizzle");
SqlCommand cmd=new SqlCommand("select * from IRZ.Lookupvalues order by Category",cn);
cn.Open();
SqlDataReader dr=cmd.ExecuteReader();
while(dr.Read())
{
if(catName==dr["Category"].ToString())
{#>
<asp:ListItem Text="<#= dr["Name"].ToString()#>" Value="<#= dr["Code"].ToString()#>" />
<#}
else
{
if(catName!=string.Empty){#>
</Irizzle:SmartDropDown>
</div>
<#}#>
<div id="div<#= dr["Category"].ToString()#>" runat="server" class="row">
<label for="drp<#= dr["Category"].ToString()#>"><#= dr["Title"].ToString()#></label>
<Irizzle:SmartDropDown ID="drp<#= dr["Category"].ToString()#>" runat="server">
<asp:ListItem Selected="True" Text="-----------" Value=""/>
<asp:ListItem Text="<#= dr["Name"].ToString()#>" Value="<#= dr["Code"].ToString()#>" />
<#}
catName=dr["Category"].ToString();
#>
<# i++;}
dr.Close();
cn.Close();
#>
</Irizzle:SmartDropDown>
</div>
i am sure T4 can save you and your companies hell lot of time. what i am wondering about is why not so many people talk about this great feature.
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