Comments on: Multiple outputs from T4 made easy – revisited

By: Versioning with T4 templates | somewhat abstract

Versioning with T4 templates | somewhat abstract — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 22:24:57 +0000

[...] of different types in a single file might be a tad unmanageable in some circumstances, I discovered a rather handy T4 mix-in that permits me to output multiple files from a single template using a simple [...]

By: Bill Huth

Bill Huth — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 23:40:28 +0000

Just an FYI,

If the T4Toolbox is included ( ), the Manager produces no files. I think it is in the dispose method of the surrounding class…but I could not track it down.

Bill

By: Damien Guard

Damien Guard — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 13:51:51 +0000

There's nothing the template can do automatically as far as I know but you can manually edit the .csproj file and make one DependentUpon the other which will visually stack them in the Project Explorer. [)amien

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 08:09:59 +0000

Hi Damien, you seem to know your T4 stuff – very handy include.

A quick question; I’m generating a WCF service (the .svc and .cs file) via T4, everything works fine but for some reason Visual Studio separates the .svc and the .cs file – is there a way to make the .cs file be a shadow of the .svc as it usually does if you create the service manually?

Regards, Paul.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:42:12 +0000

Cool. Thanks for the feedback.. My code just has an extra section that preprocesses the header now. A little less efficient — but its an offline process anyway :)
The mileage we get from the outputted code is immense. Thanks!

By: Damien Guard

Damien Guard — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 17:14:16 +0000

Yes, this template does not supports building one block in multiple places and I think it would add complexity to it that most people don’t need.

[)amien

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 04:44:05 +0000

…Attempting to build the header in several different blocks…

By: Damien Guard

Damien Guard — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 23:43:25 +0000

Are you building the header in a single go after a normal block or attempting to build the header in several different blocks?

[)amien

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 23:38:18 +0000

Damien,
Thanks for the help! Big time saver, but I have a really gnawing issue with it.
How come when I add to the header AFTER adding a normal block, the header information appears inline and not with the rest of the header? It would make better sense (to me), to output all header information inside the header, and not piecewise, throughout the file (this is only an issue when outputting a single file). Is this by design? From my app’s POV its a bug.
Thoughts?

By: Luis Rocha

Luis Rocha — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 19:49:30 +0000

Hi Damien, thanks a lot for providing this template!!

I’ve been using your template since the first version, and now I started using it for the Chinook Database to generate multiple sql and batch files. I noticed that the Manager class generates all files with UTF-8 encoding only. In my case, I need to created sql files with Unicode encoding, and batch files with ASCII encoding.

I changed your original template and added an Encoding attribute to the Block class, and overloaded the StartNewFile method:

public void StartNewFile(String name) {
StartNewFile(name, Encoding.UTF8);
}

public void StartNewFile(String name, Encoding encoding) {
if (name == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException(“name”);
CurrentBlock = new Block { Name = name, Encoding = encoding };
}

Then, I used the block encoding in all calls to File.WriteAllText and to File.ReadAllText (to regenerate a file if its encoding has changed). This way we can control the encoding of the generated files. The modified version I am using is located here, just in case you want to integrate it.

Thanks again for this template!

Cheers,
Luis