CodeSmith Community

CodeSmith Generator 6.5: New DB2 SchemaProvider

Blake Niemyjski — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:30:00 GMT

We are happy to announce Generator support for DB2 . With the help of David Logan we were able to add a new DB2 Schema Provider that ships with the latest version of Generator. You can now generate using the Schema Explorer API and existing templates against DB2. This is a huge win for all DB2 developers! Please let us know what you think! Please let us know if you have any feedback or questions about CodeSmith Generator. Download Now...(read more)

CodeSmith Generator Upcoming Feature: Bracket Highlighting

Blake Niemyjski — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 16:30:00 GMT

Today I'm happy to announce an upcoming feature for one of the most customer requested template editor features: Bracket Highlighting! Bracket Highlighting Bracket Highlighting creates visible highlights around sets of delimiters (parentheses, square brackets, and curly braces) when the caret is next to them. In the screenshot above, the caret is next to a } character which the C# language implementation recognizes as a bracket that should receive highlighting. Thus its background is highlighted...(read more)

Announcing support for ASP.NET WebAPI and KendoUI

Blake Niemyjski — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 15:39:00 GMT

We are delighted to announce that we’ve added support for ASP.NET WebAPI and Kendo UI to the PLINQO for Entity Framework templates ! In the article below we will talk about the templates and show off the new features. Please note that while we are still working on these features, we would love for you to download the templates and give us your feedback. Also note that you will need to download and install MVC4 and NuGet before continuing. Getting Started Please note that the templates require...(read more)

NuGet support for the Template Frameworks

Blake Niemyjski — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 19:46:00 GMT

If you haven't heard about NuGet yet, you may be living under a rock! NuGet, is a package manager that gives you quick access to add or update external dependencies. We love making our products that save you as much time as possible, which is why we thought NuGet would be a perfect fit. Please follow the guide below on how to use our CSLA templates via NuGet! We have also updated all of our CSLA documentation to reflect using NuGet and much more. Getting Started Install the CodeSmith.Generator...(read more)

CodeSmith Generator 6.5: Schema Providers

Blake Niemyjski — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 15:00:00 GMT

We recently released CodeSmith Generator 6.5.0 , which includes many new features and improvements. One of the areas that we focused on was our existing Schema Providers. Based on customer feedback, we added two new Schema Providers (VistaDB 4.x and SQL Compact 4) to Generator 6.5. We've kept the previous schema providers for backwards compatibility, so if you are using SQL Compacts 3.5 or VistaDB 3.x we haven't forgot about you! On top of adding two new Schema Providers, we spent time updating...(read more)

CodeSmith Generator 6.5: Template Explorer Improvements

Blake Niemyjski — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 15:00:00 GMT

We recently released CodeSmith Generator 6.5.0 , which includes many new features and improvements. We've made a few tweaks to the Template Explorer to increase your productivity while improving usability. We found and fixed various behavioral bugs in Template Explorer that caused documents to be opened behind or on top of the current application. We also made it much quicker to add a template shortcut by using the Windows Vista / 7 native folder browser control. This gives you the ability to...(read more)

CodeSmith Generator 6.5: Schema Explorer Improvements

Blake Niemyjski — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 15:00:00 GMT

We recently released CodeSmith Generator 6.5.0 , which includes many new features and improvements. One of the larger areas that received a major face lift was Schema Explorer. Schema Explorer now provides you with improved contextual icons for various schema objects like: composite keys, computed columns, parameter direction, and more. We are always looking for ways to improve the Schema Explorer, so please send us your comments. Downloading CodeSmith Generator 6.5 CodeSmith Generator 6.5 is a major...(read more)

CodeSmith Generator 6.5: Template Editor Improvements

Blake Niemyjski — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 15:00:00 GMT

We recently released CodeSmith Generator 6.5.0 , which includes many new features and improvements. One of the areas that we focused heavily on was the Template Editor. We did a lot of work to ensure that the Template Editor experience is consistent in both Generator Studio and Visual Studio Integration. As such, all of the following features and improvements can be found in both IDE's. The following document will cover some of the features that were added to the Template Editor in Generator...(read more)

CodeSmith Generator 6.5: Standalone Template Editor

Blake Niemyjski — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 15:00:00 GMT

We recently released CodeSmith Generator 6.5.0 , which includes many new features and improvements . We added a completely new stand alone Template Editor to CodeSmith Generator 6.5. It offers all of the rich functionality you would expect to have inside of an integrated development environment (IDE). We also modeled Generator Studio after Visual Studio's IDE to provide you with a consistent and familiar editing experience no matter where you are at. The following document will walk you through...(read more)

Announcing CodeSmith Generator 6.5

Blake Niemyjski — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:00:00 GMT

We are very excited to announce Generator 6.5 . We have been working the last couple of months on Generator 6.5 , introducing over 30 new features, refining existing features and working off feedback provided by customers. Over the next few days we will be blogging about the new features in Generator 6.5. Here is a list of some of the areas that we've made improvements to or added new functionality to in Generator 6.5: Generator Studio (Standalone Template Editor) . Visual Studio 2012 Support...(read more)

CodeSmith Generator 6.5 Release Candidate

ejsmith — Thu, 10 May 2012 22:41:00 GMT

Work on CodeSmith Generator 6.5 is almost complete. Today, we are releasing the CodeSmith Generator 6.5 RC . This release has MANY improvements and bug fixes from the beta version and we are hoping to get your feedback before final release. For a list of all the changes in this version, check out the release notes . Download CodeSmith Generator 6.5 RC...(read more)

Announcing Visual Studio 11 Integration

Blake Niemyjski — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:26:00 GMT

We are excited to announce support for the Visual Studio 11 (VS11) Beta today. This will be available in the next beta of CodeSmith Generator 6.5 , which is coming soon. We have done a lot of work in structuring CodeSmith Generator 6.x to allow us to enable features at a faster pace, while ensuring the features we do add are available across the board. Please note that we will not be theming our controls for VS11 until a VS11 release candidate is available....(read more)

CodeSmith Generator Setup Documentation

Cody Smith — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 16:00:00 GMT

We want setting up CodeSmith Generator to be as easy as 1-2-3! So, we have been working on some new documentation covering how to setup CodeSmith Generator for over a week now, and we are finally ready to announce it! Some things we will go over in the new documentation will be how to install, change, and uninstall CodeSmith Generator . You can download the documentation in a .PDF format here , there is a link on the right hand column to download the latest version. Don't forget to check out...(read more)

Announcing CodeSmith Generator 6.5 Beta

ejsmith — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 19:29:00 GMT

We are excited to announce the CodeSmith Generator 6.5 Beta today. We continue to listen to the feedback from our users and have implemented several of the top requested features in this release. The primary feature for this release is the new standalone template editor. We did a lot of refactoring to make sure that our Visual Studio and our standalone editors provide an identical experience and the end result is that we are sharing over 95% of the code between the two. This means that, going forward...(read more)

CodeSmith Generator Studio in CodeSmith Generator 6.0

ejsmith — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:03:00 GMT

Update: CodeSmith Generator 6.5 features a standalone editor. You can access it through the start menu shortcut. We have heard a lot of feedback that you guys love the new integrated editor inside of Visual Studio, but we have also heard from a lot of people that they want the stand alone editor as well. So we just wanted to let you guys know that we have begun working on the new stand alone template editor. Luckily with the way that we have designed the integrated editor, it shouldn’t be a...(read more)

New and Improved Generator Overview Video

Autumn Wilkins — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:43:00 GMT

Since launching Generator 6, we have been working on improving our documentation and videos. And, we recently just finished updating our 'Overview Video'. In the video you will see the power of our PLINQO framework which extends Microsoft's Linq to SQL. We also highlight a template that uses a table from the database so you can see how Generator is built right into Visual Studio 2010 . This provides you with the editing features you know and love, like IntelliSense and Quick Info. You...(read more)

Version Control Improvements in CodeSmith Generator 6.0

ejsmith — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 21:43:22 GMT

In CodeSmith Generator 6.0 , we made some changes that will help users who are using exclusive checkout version control systems like TFS, Vault and SourceSafe. In the past, if you generated a bunch of files using CodeSmith Generator, it would overwrite the file contents and change the modified date on files even if the generated content was exactly the same as the existing content. This would cause the version control system to checkout every single file and treat them as if they were...(read more)

CodeSmith Generator 6.0 Released!

Blake Niemyjski — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:18:00 GMT

We are very excited to announce the release of CodeSmith Generator 6.0 ! This release will be especially interesting to anyone who is actively editing their templates or creating new templates because the editing experience has been greatly improved . Here is a list of the major new features in this release: Brand new template editor integrated right into Visual Studio 2010! Vastly improved IntelliSense with support for directives, extension methods, lambdas, generics, and more! Improved Syntax Highlighting...(read more)

CodeSmith Generator 6.0: Debugging

Blake Niemyjski — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:53:00 GMT

One of the areas that we have been testing since we released the CodeSmith Generator 6.0 Release Candidate is Debugging Support . We feel that this has always been a key feature to the product and an area we want to make sure works well and is easy to use. For those of you who are new to Debugging a Template, we have completely updated all of our Debugging Documentation ! The underlying debugging experience has changed a lot under the hood since we integrated the Editor into Visual Studio, but the...(read more)

CodeSmith Generator 6.0–Status, Website and Future

ejsmith — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:38:42 GMT

We are on the home stretch of Generator 6.0 and things have come together really nicely. This is going to be a great release! We have been mostly working on performance, memory utilization and bug fixes, and we are doing really good on all fronts now. The feedback we have been getting is very positive and everyone seems to love the new version. We are really excited to get this release out the door, but we have some house cleaning to finish first. I have been working on making...(read more)

CodeSmith Generator 6.0 Release Candidate Released!

Blake Niemyjski — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:05:00 GMT

The CodeSmith team would like to start off by telling everyone thank you for all of your continued effort with testing and providing feedback for CodeSmith Generator 6.0. With this note, we would still love to hear your feedback on what you think of Generator 6.0. We have started to wind down on this release, focusing on finishing touches and ensuring the performance of Generator 6.0 is up to every ones expectations. Download CodeSmith Generator Release Candidate Release Notes...(read more)

How Does Premier Support Work?

Autumn Wilkins — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 21:45:00 GMT

So, what is Premier Support and how does it work? We get this question from time to time and I am here to clear up any questions you may have about it. Premier Support is a support option that can be added to any of our CodeSmith Generator licenses. With it you get the following: FREE upgrades to new major and minor releases of CodeSmith Generator. Priority access to the CodeSmith development team for your support issues. 1 Business day email response time with priority over standard users. Access...(read more)

Unifying the CodeSmith Generator Experience

ejsmith — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:51:57 GMT

Over the years there has been a lot of confusion and complaints about the Standard edition of CodeSmith Generator. Here are just a few of the issues that we see with having two separate editions of CodeSmith Generator: Support requests with people who had downloaded the Professional trial and then purchased Standard only to find out that certain templates didn’t work with Standard. A lot of the templates that we have created recently are designed to be used inside of Visual Studio and those...(read more)

CodeSmith Generator 6.0: Go To Definition and View Code Support

Blake Niemyjski — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 19:04:00 GMT

The CodeSmith Team has been hard at work on feedback received from CodeSmith Generator Beta 2 as well as two new features to Generator 6.0. Go To Definition We are very happy to announce Go To Definition support which will be available in the Release Candidate. This feature will allow you to right click on any identifier (E.G., Classes, Methods, Properties and Variables) in your template and quickly navigate to where they were defined. This makes navigating your template code much easier! We are...(read more)

CodeSmith Generator 6.0-Error Window Improvements

Blake Niemyjski — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:06:00 GMT

We have received lots of feedback on CodeSmith Generator 6.0, and we would love if everyone continued to provide feedback. We use the feedback you provide to determine the areas we spend resources on. One of the key areas that we worked on since the first beta of CodeSmith Generator 6.0 was on improving the error reporting experience. We found a few pain points along the way and have made improvements that left us with a great experience.

The first behavior that we noticed is that any errors that occurred were properly reported to the error window. But once you navigated to a new template and then back to the previous template, the new template errors would be the only errors present. The new behavior automatically updates the error window with any errors that occurred with the currently open template during compile time or run-time (validation). This allows you to work with multiple templates without stopping to recompile each template.

The second behavior we noticed in the past is that when a validation error occurred at run-time because a sub templates property wasn't set by the master. We would present a dialog box that wasn't helpful at all. Now, we will add a detailed error message as well as present you with the exact template line that called the Render method on which the sub templates property wasn't being set.

We now present you with a detailed description of what error occurred as well as the line number and column where to start looking. This is a huge improvement over the previous versions.

The third behavior that we fixed dealt with focusing the Error Window. We found that the focus was lost right away which caused the Error Window to present itself and then disappear. This really caused for an annoyance when building templates.

The last behavior occurred if you generated a template within Visual Studio and it compiled fine but a validation error was presented (Required Property is missing), we would update the Error Window but do nothing else. We decided to automatically show the property window as well as the Error Window so you can set the required property.