Some time ago I created T4 templates for creating pre-generated views for Entity Framework Code First applications. I wanted to make them available as soon as possible so I just uploaded them as a zip file to one of my sites and provided a link. This worked as a short-term solution but long-term I wanted something better. Something that would not require manual work. Something that would integrate with Visual Studio seamlessly. Something that is actually called Visual Studio Code Gallery. And it happened yesterday. Yesterday I published the templates on the Visual Studio Code Galery.

Using the templates

First you need to download the templates. You can do it directly from Visual Studio. Right click on your project and select Add -> New Item (Ctrl+Shift+A). In the Add New Item dialog go to “Online templates”:

and search for “EF Views”. This should make the “EF CodeFirst View Generation T4 Template for C#/VB” show up (note: only the template for the language of the current project will show up).

Change the name of the file at the bottom to {Context}.Views.tt where {Context} is the name of the class derived from DbContext you want to create pre-generated views for.
Click “Add” to add the template to your project. Wait for the views to be generated (note: for bigger models view generation may take an extended amount of time).

You can also install templates manually just by downloading vsix files from Visual Studio Code Gallery and pressing “Enter”. Here are direct links to the templates:

• Template for C#: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/ae7730ce-ddab-470f-8456-1b313cd2c44d
• Template for VB.Net: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/118b44f2-1b91-4de2-a584-7a680418941d

Once you installed the templates you can find them in the “Code” category. Right click on your project and select Add -> New Item (Ctrl+Shift+A). In the “Add New Item” dialog go to the “Code” section:

If needed the templates can be uninstalled from Extension Manager (Tools -> Extension Manager):

Happy coding.

Pawel Kadluczka

When working with Entity Framework view generation may take a long time for bigger or complicated models. The workaround for this problem is to use pre-generated views. In case of Database First and Model First approaches you can use T4 templates that will create the pre-generated views (you can find more details here). But what to do when using Code First approach? One possibility is to use Entity Framework Power Tools – just right-click on the file containing your DbContext derived class and select “Optimize Data Model”. Voila – views are created. But what if you need more control, cannot use UI (e.g. you want your build system to create the pre-generated views) or the tool for whatever reason does not work? You can for instance follow this 5 steps:

• Get Edmx file for your model using EdmxWriter.WriteEdmx() method
• Retrieve csdl, msl, ssdl from the edmx file and save them
• From the Visual Studio Command Prompt run EdmGen with mode parameter set to ViewGeneration (i.e. /mode:ViewGeneration)
• Add the generated C#/VB.Net file to your project
• Repeat each time you change your model

Easy? Maybe. Error prone? Probably. Cumbersome? For sure. But now there is a third way. Similarly to the T4 templates for Model and Database First workflows I created T4 templates for creating pre-generated views for Code First approach. Now, you would just add the right (C# or VB.Net) template to your project, rename it so that it contains the name of the context you want to create the views for (e.g. MyContext.Views.tt) and generate your views by right clicking the template and selecting “Run Custom Tool” menu option. Note that creating the pre-generated views with the template will take approximately the same amount of time it takes to create views at runtime – you are just doing the work that would be done at runtime at design time. The templates are (temporarily) available here. I will update this post when they are moved to the final location.The templates are available on the Visual Studio Code Gallery. See this post for more details.

Pawel Kadluczka