Tangible T4 Editor Blog

tangible T4 Editor (Alpha) in VS2010 Beta 2 shows up… (Updated)

Speedy development – awesome design. With no code changes betwen Beta1 and Beta 2 the tangible T4 Editor in its current alpha bits form brings light to “.tt” files in Beta 2 right from the start.

Download and install instructions(Click here)

Go get it from the extension manager to start customizing code generation and wizrards in VS2010 Beta 2 – Code Gen from the new cool Team System UML Diagrams, Entity Framework 2.0 and more…

In Visual Studio just goto Tools->Extension Manager and search for tools online. If you are an admin do not forget to click on the “Allow loading user extensions button".

Update: Here is a list of useful How-Tos from Tim Fischer

How To: Migrate T4 Text Templates from VS2008 to VS2010 Beta 2

How-To: Generate Code from Team System UML Diagrams in VS 2010 Team System Beta 2

How-To: Transform Team System UML Class Diagrams into Database Diagrams and actual ORM-Classes with T4

tangible T4 Editor now listed in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Extension Manager

>> For Product Homepage & Support and VS2008 click here <<

We have made a small update 1.5.02 for VS 2010 Beta2 which is now available from Visual Studio Extension Manager. You can start the Extension Manager from inside VS 2010 Beta 2 via Tools Menu->Extension Manager. Then Click “Online Gallery” select the T4 Editor and Download. The restart VS 2010.

Alternatively: If you want it the old way, then you can download via download button from here. Then double click the VSIX file when VS2010 is closed. Note: .VSIX is a replacement for .msi for new VS2010 Addins.

Make sure that if you run VS as Admin or under XP that you do set the following checkboxes in the Tools->Options plus “Load Extensions from my local applications folder” – if you run VS as Admin.

I think we are again the first 3rd Party tool ;-)

Have fun!

Tim

tangible T4 Editor, tangible architect and Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

Yes we are Sparx Systems partners and we do sell their tool in addition to our modelling tools. Sparx has a great UML2.1 compliant tool that nicley integrates with Visual Studio and TFS. It can be used as a replacement of our free modelling tools. Both T4 Editor and tangible architect work with it and understand it's models. So if you need an advanced modeling tool than check out Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect. Note that it is also included in the Enterprise Edition of tangible architect.

tangible T4 Editor and tangible architect - what is what and how do they fit together?

We certainly get this question a lot.

Short answer is: These are different products with a different price point on our price list. However they share a few components such as the modeling tools and that's the reason why they can be used together efficiently.

Here is the long answer: tangible architect is a complete Software Factory. This means it consists of the same modeling tools that come with T4 Editor but also brings it's own code generation (templates) capabilities to generate Business Objects, SQL-Server Schema and a schema management component that can upgrade schemas with a changed model. It also has a Drag and Drop UI-Designer. Besides it can do reverse engineering from code. The only functional limitation is that you cannot change the existing code generators we have. However you can add additional code to the partial classes being generated by using T4 Editor. As tangible architect maintains model, code and database schema in sync automatically it is a good match for Rapid Prototyping and mid-sized projects.

tangible T4 Editor plus modeling tools is the foundation you can build your own Software Factory with or add additional code generation to a tangible architect project. Note that the code generation logic we ship with tangible architect as well as the UI-Designer and Schema-Management are not part of tangible T4 Editor plus modeling tools. You would need to write our own templates or reuse templates from the online gallery to generate business objects, db schema and write your own schema management component and eventually reverse-engineering capabilities if you want the same level of functionality for your architecture that tangible architect provides.

The T4 Editor is used when you need a different target architecture than tangible architect provides. E.g. if you want to use LINQ-to-SQL or Entity Framework you would need to use T4 Editor plus Modeling tools as tangible architect is based on SQL-Server-Meta-Data-Services as ORM, only.

Here is a 1 hour video on how our customers use tangible architect during the envisioning phase of a project for rapid prototyping and later on switch to tangible T4 Editor plus modeling tools to target a different architecture.

Video: Team-Play - tangible architect and T4 Editor in large Projects

If you are interested to trial Tangible Architect VS2008 please contact us via the contact form. We have a version ready for you.

tangible T4 Editor 1.5.02 available – better Intelli-Sense for inner classes

We updated both the VS2010 Beta1 and VS2008 Version to fix a known issue with intelli-sense when using inner classes. So make sure you get the latest build – also available from within VS2010 Beta 1 as an Update in the Extension Manager. Enjoy!

tangible T4 Editor for Visual Studio 2010 Beta1 available (FREE + PRO)

As Somasegar pointed out VS 2010 Beta 1 ships now…
and we are thrilled to announce the immediate availability of
tangible T4 Editor 1.5 for Visual Studio 2010 Beta1 – which was released today – so same day as VS 2010 Beta 1 did release – yes!

You can install from the Visual Studio Extension Manager

Alternatively: If you want it the old way, then you can download via download button from here. Then double click the VSIX file when VS2010 is closed. Note: .VSIX is a replacement for .msi for new VS2010 Addins.

For more info about the features of the T4 Editor see this page. Note, that only the T4 editor is included - not the modeling tools.

In VS2010 Beta 1 Microsoft uses T4 now also in Entity Framework 4.0 and in the new Modeling Support of the Architecture Edition. Note VS2010 Beta1 now brings it’s own T4 item templates – so we did not put ours inside for now.

As usual you can find a sample T4 template for generating from the new VS2010 Use Case Diagrams in the build-in template gallery (VS 2010 Beta1 Section). Here are some cool screenshots and examples…

1. VS 2010 Beta 1 includes a ADO.NET EntityObject Generator

2. VS 2010 Beta 1 includes Modeling Diagrams which work with T4

3. Certainly also our template gallery works from within VS2010

Enjoy!

T4 Editor for Visual Studio 2010 CTP 2 VPC and beyond… (Updated)

We just re-released our tangible T4 Editor only release for Visual Studio 2010 CTP2 and beyond – now this is updated with version 1.4.01 of the editor.

You can download VS2010 CTP here
Then you should disable the timeout of VS2010
CTP before starting it. see here for details.

Then just start the VM copy the tangible T4 Editor For Dev10.zip there, extract it and run setup.bat. Note, that the license agreement is still to be accepted to complete setup.bat.

Have fun. ;-)

tangible T4 Editor 1.4 – Support for ASP.NET MVC T4 Template Editing with Intelli-Sense in FREE EDITION & more

We are excited to announce FREE T4 Editor with Intelli-Sense for all namespaces and MVC Host used in standard MS MVC 1.0 RTM Templates. In addition V1.4 added .t4 extension support for GAT/GAX users as well as an other number of performance improvements for large projects using #include statements.

Here are the screenshots of the FREE edition editing MVC T4 Templates with Intelli-Sense for those namespaces and the MVC Host build-in.

Here is the download of the tangible T4 Editor

Learn here how to customize T4 Templates for MVC.

How to call GAX-based T4 Templates (that have a Property Directive) from standard T4 Templates

The property directive is one of the most discussed features of T4. By Microsoft it is implemented in the GAX Host not in the standard Visual Studio Host. This means that when you run a template by saving it with the standard mechanism (DSLTools) in Visual Studio it will fail.

Although there are other good mechanism for making reusable templates users of GAX/GAT and Blueprints need to rely on this mechanism.

But how can can work with GAX templates and call them from standard Text Templates, then?

1. You need to install GAX from here.

2. You need to get the T4GAXRunner.ttinclude template

Luckily tangible published a TT-Include File that provides the necessary code. You find it in the in-product template gallery of tangible’s T4 Editor. You can read about the gallery here.

The Code to use T4GAXRunner looks like this. The anonymous object encapsulates the parameters and values you want to pass as members.

<#@ include file="T4GAXRunner.ttinclude" #>

<# GetT4GAXRunner().Render("GAXSample.t4",

new {ClassName="MyClass", Namespace="ns"}); #> <

This would then call a typical GAX.tt file like this one.

<#@ template language="C#" #>

<#@ output extension=".cs" #>

<#@ property processor="PropertyProcessor" name="ClassName" type="System.String" #>

<#@ property processor="PropertyProcessor" name="Namespace" type="System.String" #>

namespace <#= Namespace #>

{

class <#= ClassName #> {

// more…

}

Conclusion

You can run your GAX based files from a standard T4 files. Just download tangible’s T4 Editor and get the template from the gallery.

T4 Text Template “How-Do-I?” Videos

We just posted a great series of “how do i?” videos about T4. They show the value of the in-product Online Template Gallery and Drag and Drop features very well.