Geco, (Ge)nerator (Co)nsole
Simple code generator based on a console project, running on .Net Core and using C# interpolated strings.
Geco runs on .Net Core 2.0. Download and Install
What's the reasoning behind this utility?
One of the most popular code generation tools for Visual Studio over the years was T4 (Text Template Transformation Toolkit), which saw a great deal of success for simple to complex code generation tasks. Scott Hanselman has a nice blog post about it. However, since the advent of .Net Core and .Net going cross platform there is no simple way to generate code or other artifacts that would also work in Visual Studio Code (or other code editors).
This is where the idea for this simple utility came from. Have a small utility for code generation that is debuggable (one of the long standing issues of T4), provides some level of intellisense, can be run at build time, is higly customizable, generic and has an as small as possible footprint.
Installation
Geco can be installed as a Visual Studio Project Template or as dotnet new
template.
To install Geco as a dotnet new template
run the following command on a console or terminal:
dotnet new -i iQuarc.Geco.CSharp
Then create a new project using the newly installed template:
dotnet new geco
To create a Geco project when installed as a Visual Studio Project template, Select File -> New project select the Geco template.
Code Generation examples
Bellow are some snippets from the included code generation tasks that are in the default Geco package.
Next snippet is from the included Entity Framework Core Reverse model generator, which exemplifies part of the code generation:
This snippet is from the SQL Seed Scrip Generator, which generates SQL Merge scripts for Seed data:
Next screen shot shows Geco running in interactive mode (as a Console App), and the menu that is presented to the user:
Description
Geco uses C# 6.0 string interpolation as a template engine for code generation, in order to allow:
- Easy customization of templates (Simply edit the .cs file)
- Easy debugging (Place a breakpoint an run)
- Easy extensibility (Add a new task by creating a new C# class and implement a simple interface
IRunnable
)
Geco uses task discovery at runtime and each task is configured using Dependency Injection. The generation tasks can be run during build or from interactive mode (Debug Run).
Included generators
The following generator tasks are included in current version.
- Entity Framework Core 1.1, 2.0 Reverse model generator
- SQL Seed data script generator (Generates MERGE scripts)
- SQL Script runner
- Database cleaner
Customizing
- The first customization option involves changing task parameters from
appsettings.json
configuration file. Each Geco task defines its own set of parameters (see the corresponding Options class):
{
"ConnectionStrings": {
"DefaultConnection": "Integrated Security=True;Initial Catalog=AdventureWorks;Data Source=.\\SQLEXPRESS;"
},
"RunAtBuildTasks": [
"Generate EF Core model"
],
"Tasks": [
{
"Name": "Generate EF Core model",
"TaskClass": "Geco.Database.EntityFrameworkCoreReverseModelGenerator",
"BaseOutputPath": "..\\..\\Generated\\Model\\",
"OutputToConsole": "false",
"CleanFilesPattern": "*.cs",
"Options": {
"ConnectionName": "DefaultConnection",
"Namespace": "Model",
"OneFilePerEntity": true,
"JsonSerialization": true,
"GenerateComments": true,
"UseSqlServer": true,
"ConfigureWarnings": true,
"GeneratedCodeAttribute": false,
"NetCore": true,
"ContextName":"AdventureworksContext"
}
}
]
}
-
By customizing existing templates directly.
-
By creating new code generation tasks as a C# class which implements the
IRunnable
interface.
IRunnable
is a single method interface containing the Run
method:
/// <summary>
/// Represents a runable task, for code generation or purposes or others
/// </summary>
public interface IRunnable
{
/// <summary>
/// Invoked when this task is executed
/// </summary>
void Run();
}
or by deriving from one of the helper base classes BaseGenerator
or BaseGeneratorWithMetadata
.
A code generation class can be accompanied by an Options POCO class to hold customization parameters from appsettings.json
Example:
public class SeedDataGeneratorOptions
{
public string ConnectionName { get; set; }
public string OutputFileName { get; set; }
public List<string> Tables { get; } = new List<string>();
public string TablesRegex { get; set; }
public List<string> ExcludedTables { get; } = new List<string>();
public string ExcludedTablesRegex { get; set; }
public int ItemsPerStatement { get; set; } = 1000;
}
/// <summary>
/// Generates seed scripts with merge statements for (Sql Server)
/// </summary>
[Options(typeof(SeedDataGeneratorOptions))]
public class SeedDataGenerator : BaseGeneratorWithMetadata
{
// ...
}
Roadmap
- ASP.Net MVC Template (scaffolds controllers and views)
- ASP.Net + Angular scaffolder (scaffolds Web Api and components)
- SQL Sever to SQL Compact data sync template (Api to syncrhonize schema compatible SQL Server and SQL Compact databases including Web Api and .Net client methods)
Version History
Version 1.0.2
- Added constraint delete behavior support
- Modified logo
Version 1.0.1
- Changed Entity Framework Core generator to allow multi column foreign keys
- Fixed MetaData for MaxLength nvarchar and nchar columns
- Removed tables without primary key from generated model
- Switched to semver
Version 1.0.0.2
- Changed user confirmation mechanism
- Added user confirmation for file cleaning
- Added more options for color output to console, formattable strings with tuple (value, ConsoleColor) parameters
Version 1.0.0.1
- First release as a
nuget dotnet
new template
Version 1.0.0.0-beta
- Initial Version
- Contains code generation core functionality and SimpleMetadata model for databases