Q: Template Creation Dialog

[grahamehorner]

I'm reviewing/researching the new templating engine for creating a set of templates that accept user/developer input similar to the aspnetcore templates; I'm confused to how/what is require and if sidewafflev2 can do this? also if/how/what I need to do to create a compatible vsix and weather vs-2017.host.json, *.vstemplate and/or other file are needed in the .template.config folder.

It would be great if you could share any help/guide references

thanks in advance.

[sayedihashimi]

If you have parameters that the user needs to specify, you will need to create a custom wizard that presents a UI and then passes those as parameters to the other wizards. In the .vstemplate this new wizard should be placed above the other wizards. I think I have a sample of this somewhere, I will look for it. Regarding the host file, if you put that next to your template.json file, it should be picked up and included in the .nupkg/.vsix. You don’t need a host file but template.json is required.

[sayedihashimi]

Here is the sample I was talking about https://github.com/sayedihashimi/sayed-samples/tree/master/dotnet-templates/PassParameterFromWizard. Specifically the wizard is at https://github.com/sayedihashimi/sayed-samples/blob/master/dotnet-templates/PassParameterFromWizard/VsixProject1/SayedWizard.cs and it’s declared in the .vstemplate at https://github.com/sayedihashimi/sayed-samples/blob/master/dotnet-templates/PassParameterFromWizard/Sayed.Console01/.template.config/template.vstemplate. In the wizard you’ll need to prefix the parameter name with “passthrough:” see https://github.com/sayedihashimi/sayed-samples/blob/813dbaf03d82c9c52f560666619d4f1cb648b9a5/dotnet-templates/PassParameterFromWizard/VsixProject1/SayedWizard.cs#L24

Let me know if you have more Qs.

[grahamehorner]

many thanks for the quick reply links and samples, much appreciated.

I do have other questions around structure of the generated solution, ie how the place projects into folders such as src or tests etc. ? I'm not sure if I'm doing something incorrect but projects don't seem to go into folders or solution folders.

[sayedihashimi]

The projects will be laid out in disk as they are in the template. To make a sln folder you’ll need to do that in a wizard. I think it’s easiest to add this wizard to run last and it should do the following:

• remove projects added to sln
  • add sln folders
  • add projects to sln in the sln folders

[grahamehorner]

@sayedihashimi I'm trying to run the samples and/or add the custom dialog to the vsix/template.json as shown in the samples; however keep getting the error below

any ideas ?

[sayedihashimi]

I’ve never heard of DXC.Foundation.Template, I believe that’s not related to the sample. I will try it tomorrow, but I’m pretty sure that is some issue on the machine that you’re using.

[grahamehorner]

Sorry, DXC.Foundation.Template is my own assembly; pasted wrong screenshot, doh! but I get the same error with the sample expect with a different component name.

[sayedihashimi]

@grahamehorner can you paste the error you're getting when running the sample w/o modifications?

[grahamehorner]

@sayedihashimi apologies I got this to work, it was an issue with my signing cert

[sayedihashimi]

Happy to hear you got it working. If your template is open source please share a link.

[grahamehorner]

@sayedihashimi I would be happy to share, however I need to check with my employer and/or the client for which we are developing these templates on weather they would be happy to publish these given the number of additional closed source nugets that are referenced.

[sayedihashimi]

@grahamehorner no problem, if you have some proprietary stuff there then it's best to keep it private :) If it was OSS then I would take a look to see what you're working on.