thefrozencoder

Programming and Technology blog

T4 Template lovin'

The following is a couple of T4 templates that I have been fooling around with in my spare time (sharing the time between jQuery, StringTemplate view engine for ASP.NET MVC and other endeavors).  For the most part these templates are nothing special, they generate both the T-SQL (stored procedures) and a simple but effective data access layer.  Like I said nothing special.

A good resource for starting with T4 templates is @ David Hayden site where he has a Screencast on how to use them.  Below describes some of the settings used to get my simple sample up and running.
Extract the _common.tt, DataClass.tt and T-SQL.tt files from the zip and add them to your VS project in a folder (like Generation).  In the _common.tt file there are some settings (variables) that you can use to modify how the code is generated.  You will need SQL 2005 client tools installed on your machine as it uses the SMO object library.  Once the code is compiled just cut and paste it into separate class files and run the T-SQL code on your db.

  • ConnectionString - This is your connection string to your database
  • TableName - This is the table you are going to run the code against
  • SchemaName - Use this for applying a schema to your T-SQL code if you use schemas (default is dbo)
  • ColumnsToOmit - Comma delimited list of columns to omit from the DAL code that is generated
  • NameSpace - Namespace of your application
  • ProcPrefix - Use to add a prefix to your stored procedures (ie. up_)
  • UseShortProperties - True | False to tell code generation to generate the C# short form for get/set properties
  • insertColumnsAsGetdate - Comma delimited list of column names that will automatically be assigned the GETDATE() T-SQL statement on an Insert.  (Also omits the fields from the insert statement parameters)
  • updateColumnsAsGetdate - Comma delimited list of column names that will automatically be assigned the GETDATE() T-SQL statement on an Update.  (Also omits the fields from the update statement parameters)

The code is supplied as is and if it's broken fix it, you're a programmer aren't you?  :P

T4 Templates.zip (4.98 kb)