Start with the Result
- Tom DuPont (Unlicensed)
- Anonymous
- Cody Smith (Unlicensed)
- Autumn Wilkins (Unlicensed)
The easiest way to build a CodeSmith Generator template is to start with an example of the code that you want to generate - in this case, a finished AssemblyInfo.cs file. Here's one that we'll use as we move through this tutorial:
using System.Reflection;
using System.Runtime.CompilerServices;
//
// Created: 1/1/1973
// Author: Blake Niemyjski
//
[assembly: AssemblyTitle("User storage utility")]
[assembly: AssemblyDescription("Helps manage data in Isolated Storage files.")]
[assembly: AssemblyConfiguration("Retail")]
[assembly: AssemblyCompany("MegaUtilities, Inc.")]
[assembly: AssemblyProduct("StorageScan")]
[assembly: AssemblyCopyright("Copyright (c) MegaUtilities, Inc.")]
[assembly: AssemblyCulture("")]
[assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.*")]
[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion("1.0")]
[assembly: AssemblyDelaySign(true)]
When you're looking at the file that you want to generate, you need to break the file up into three different types of content:
- Content that will never change
- Content that can be automatically generated.
- Content that you will prompt the user for
In the sample above, we've decided that we are going to automatically generate the Created Date on line 4, and we'll prompt the user to specify the values for Author, Title, Description, Configuration, Company, Product, Version and FileVersion. The rest of the file we'll treat as static text. Of course, you need to make these decisions with an understanding of how you'll use your template. In this case, for example, we've decided to hard-code the AssemblyDelaySign attribute to always be true. If your use of that attribute varied from project to project, you would want to make that a dynamic part of the template that you prompted the user for.
Now that we know what we want to build, it's time to get the content into the template.