T4 Templates: A Quick-Start Guide for ASP. net mvc Developers

Link: http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/archive/2009/01/29/t4-templates-a-quick-start-guide-for-asp-net-mvc-developers.aspx

 

Simply put, this is an industry-recognized code generation mechanism. T4 means: Text Template Transformation Toolkit

MVC uses T4 as the code generation template, which allows users to customize the Controller and View templates.

These templates are in the following directory

F: \ Program Files \ Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0 \ Common7 \ IDE \ ItemTemplates \ CSharp \ Web \ MVC 2 \ CodeTemplates \

The template is roughly as follows:

What are the main special variables that can be used in the template? See the following introduction.

Add Controller:

Property Name	Type	Description
ItemName	System. String	The name of the Controller class, including the 'controller' suffix
NameSpace	System. String	The namespace into which the Controller is being generated
ExtraActionMethods	System. Boolean	Indicates whether or not the user checked the option in the Add Controller dialog to get extra action methods
ControllerRootName	System. String	The name of the controller class without the 'controller' suffix

Add View:

Property Name	Type	Description
ItemName	System. String	The name of the view (without extension), as typed in the Add View dialog
NameSpace	System. String	The default namespace of the view's parent folder
IsViewUserControl	System. Boolean	Evaluates to true if the user chose a partial view in the Add View dialog
IsViewContentPage	System. Boolean	Evaluates to true if the user is creating a view with a master page
IsViewPage	System. Boolean	Evaluates to true if the user is creating a regular view page
MasterPage	System. String	Path to the master page the user chose in the dialog (to be used only when IsViewContentPage is true)
ContentPlaceholder	System. String	Name of the primary content place holder into which the generated content will be placed. This is the content place holder id the user typed into the Add View dialog
ContentPlaceHolders	System. Collections. Generic. List <System. String>	A list of all content place holder ID's in the master page, if a master page was chosen for this view
LanguageExtension	System. String	The output file's extension (including the period)
ViewDataTypeGenericString	System. String	This is a string that is used to output the generics clause for the 'explores' attribute in the view's ctictive (for stronugly-typed views ). example: "<MyType>" or "(Of MyType )"
ViewDataType	System. Type	This is a Type object representing the type to which a stronugly-typed view is bound. It can be used to get information on the properties in the type and the like