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.

recently in our project we had a requirement to export html to PDF in asp.net. there are so many components around which we can use to do this but the restriction for us was that we had to do it without spending money means we had to go for an open source component. doing so much I&D on this, we came to know about itextSharp which is a powerful open source component to create PDF files in .net. first it seemed good to us but spending sometimes on it we came to know it was not what we were looking for. two reason for that:

1. it requires a big learning curve
2. it’s not at all easy to work with

then the idea of using crystal report came to our mind. we could build the report in crystal report, load it through code without showing anything to user and through it’s API calling the export to pdf function. but it did not work since we had to run some setup components on the live server which we are not allowed to do.

meantime i just remembered we have rdlc reports in .net framework and also Microsoft report viewer. since these are .net component we don't have to install anything on the production server and Xcopy of the required assemblies will work for us. normally you can deploy the .net report files (.rdlc) using xcopy but in order to be able to use the reports you need to install Microsoft report viewer redistributable package which is freely available to download and distribute. this is fine when you have the rights to install components on the server. anyways spending sometime on this technology i found the files required to make the functionality up and running. if you don't want to install report viewer component you need to put these four dll in your bin folder:

Microsoft.ReportViewer.Common.dll
Microsoft.ReportViewer.ProcessingObjectModel.dll
Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms.dll
Microsoft.ReportViewer.WinForms.dll

you can download the files from here:
http://cid-c1dc0bf06aa2e3a6.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/BlogFiles/ReportViewerFiles.zip

then you need the following lines of code to export:

string[] streamids;
string mimeType;
string encoding;
string extension;
string fileFormat = "PDF";//can also be "Excel" or "Image";
Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.LocalReport localReport = 
new Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.LocalReport();
localReport.ReportPath = Server.MapPath("Report1.rdlc");
Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.Warning[] warnings;
byte[] bytes = localReport.Render(
fileFormat, null, out mimeType, out encoding,
out extension,
out streamids, out warnings);
System.IO.FileStream fs = 
new System.IO.FileStream(Server.MapPath("output.pdf"),
System.IO.FileMode.Create);
fs.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
fs.Close();
Response.Redirect("output.pdf");

remember you can export to PDF, Excel and Image

you can use this method both for asp.net applications and windows application.

hope this comes handy for you.

i have worked with some cool open source applications which are based on microsoft .net framework and i thought of sharing them with you.

DotNetNuke

URL: http://www.dotnetnuke.com

DotNetNuke® is the most widely adopted framework for building websites and web applications on Microsoft ASP.NET.  Using DotNetNuke, businesses can quickly develop and deploy interactive, dynamic websites, intranets, extranets and applications. 

With hundreds of thousands of deployments around the world, a thriving user community and a huge array of available third-party extensions DotNetNuke is the smartest way to develop and deploy Internet applications.

YetAnotherForum

URL: http://www.yetanotherforum.net/

 YetAnotherForum.NET (YAF) is a Open Source discussion forum or bulletin board system for web sites running ASP.NET. The latest version is ASP.NET v2.0 with a Microsoft SQL Server backend. The full C# source code is available licensed as GPL.

Oxite

URL: http://visitmix.com/Lab/Oxite

Oxite is an open source, web standards compliant, blog engine built on ASP.NET MVC. It is fully featured and includes support for all the blogging features you would expect.

Born out of a necessity to showcase Microsoft’s muscle in the blogging scene, Oxite provides example of ‘core blog functionality’ in a reusable way. The entire VisitMIX site runs on Oxite, which just shows the potential quality of the finished product. I love the effort that they have put into the design of MIX, and for once, we are able to show others a production Microsoft site running a Microsoft product that really shines visually.

nopCommerce

URL: http://www.nopcommerce.com/

Running on C# nopCommerce is a fully customizable shopping cart. It’s stable and highly usable. nopCommerce is a open source e-commerce solution that is ASP.NET 3.5 based with a MS SQL 2005 backend database.

It is pretty feature packed when you take a look around the system, and should serve as a good platform to build on for some developers. Whilst they aren’t over on the MVC system they have taken care of some of the problems with querystrings, and include a URL rewrite module.

Most developers should be able to get up and running quickly, simply change your web.config in a few places and the autoinstaller should get you going. well worth investigating if you are a .NET developer with a background in e-commerce.

BlogEngine.NET

URL: http://dotnetblogengine.net

BlogEngine.NET is an stable open source .NET blogging project. Touted as the next alternative to Wordpress for .NET developers it integrates the best features of the .NET platform into its offering. It also has received backing from Redmond, and is featured on the Microsoft.NET website as a Starter Kit.

I have been waiting for this for long time. the first version has been really usefull for me.

this is an official guied for application architecture provided by patterns and practicess team at microsoft. i hope this will be usefull for you also and let's thank the team for the greate job.

Get it here

hi,

as you may know c# is missing the nice and usfull IsNumeric function which is available in VB.net. but it is a trivial task to implement a generic equvelant function for it. look at the following code. it will return true if the value is numeric and false if the value is false.