MSDN Magazine - April 2008 - (Page 30)

add a family of code files as is done by the Windows Form template to include the form’s design code as well as the user code. For more information on configuring the template through the .vstemplate file, see the “VSTemplate Element” reference that is available in the MSDN Library at go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=110905. For more information on template parameters, see The handling of My the “Visual Studio TemExtensions within a project plate Parameters” docuis a largely hidden and mentation at go.microsoft.com/ automated process. For Visual Studio to handle these files smoothly, the Project file uses some new attributes. fwlink/?LinkId=110907. There are a few key differences between typical item templates and My Extensibility item templates. In order to enable the Item Template so it can be managed from the My Extensions page of the Visual Basic Project Designer, you must take special steps to configure it properly. First you need to add a element to the MyTemplate.vstemplate file located in the exported template .zip file. This indicates that the Item Template is to be treated as a My Extension. You also need to prevent the items in the template from being opened automatically when the template is added to the project by adding a couple of attributes onto the element. This is because My Extension template code should be invisible to the consumer. In addition, you must add the element into the MyTemplate.vstemplate to indicate that the template should not be displayed in the list of installed templates when the user elects to add items to his project through the Add New Item dialog. Finally, you need to add a .customdata file Figure 8 My Extensibility Item Template MyValidation.vb MyValidation Extends the My namespace with a set of string validation methods. VisualBasic 10 TemplateIcon.ico true Microsoft.VisualBasic.MyExtension System.Core MyValidation.vb to the package in order to provide information that does not apply to typical templates, namely a unique ID, a version number, and a trigger assembly. To do this, you will have to unpack the .zip file, perform the alterations, and then repack the necessary files. So, first unzip the template’s contents to an empty directory so you can edit them. Visual Studio will place the file in %MyDocs%\Visual Studio 2008\ My Exported Templates, where %MyDocs% is your My Documents folder. Open the MyTemplate.vstemplate file in a text or XML editor and make the edits that you see highlighted in red in Figure 8. Remember that XML, unlike Visual Basic, is case sensitive. Create a new file to be packed into the .zip file called MyValidation.customdata. Note that any file that ends with .customdata will work. In Notepad or any text editor, add the following markup: The AssemblyFullName attribute, which is omitted in this example, indicates which assembly will trigger the My Extension. In other words, you can specify here that whenever this assembly is added to the project, the user will be invited to also add the My Extension. Whenever this assembly is removed from the project, and the My Extension is currently active, the user will be invited to remove the My Extension. To specify a trigger assembly, such as System.Windows.Forms, you would insert this text into the .customdata file: Now you are ready to copy the files back into the template .zip file. You may be tempted to edit the template’s icon, but the icon of My Extension templates are not shown to the user, so I recommend leaving it as is. Copy the four files back into the .zip file using Windows Explorer. Then copy the .zip file to %MyDocs%\Visual Studio 2008\Templates\ItemTemplates\, where %MyDocs% is your My Documents folder. The .customdata File The handling of My Extensions within a project is a largely hidden and automated process. For Visual Studio to handle these files smoothly with little input from the user, the Project file, which has a .vbproj extension, has some new attributes. You can see them if you open them in a text editor the .vbproj file of the project to which you added the MyValidation extension. You will see something like this: MyValidationMyNamespaceExtension 1.0.0.0 30 msdnmagazine Basic Instincts http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=110905 http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=110907 http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=110907

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of MSDN Magazine - April 2008

MSDN Magazine - April 2008 Contents Toolbox CLR Inside Out Basic Instincts Cutting Edge Foundations Test Run Service Station Windows with C++ Going Places { End Bracket }

MSDN Magazine - April 2008

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