Macro for Adding New Property
Visual Studio 2002 and 2003 contains many sophisticated tools but it misses one of the most important - new procedure/property builder. MZ Tools add-in makes a great job here.
If you only need to create new property, I'll show you a simple macro which will help you. It will ask you for property name and type and then it will place property definition at current cursor position.
My example creates following VB .NET property but the macro can be easily modified to generate property for other language as well, e.g. C#:
'''<summary></summary>
Public Property myProperty() As String
Get
Return m_myProperty
End Get
Set(ByVal Value As String)
m_myProperty = Value
End Set
End Property
Here is the macro:
'''This macro inserts complete property definition
'''including private field.
'''</summary>
Sub InsertProperty()
DTE.UndoContext.Open("InsertProperty")
Try
Dim txt As TextSelection
txt = DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection
Dim line As String = InputBox("Name Type", "New Property")
Dim lines() As String
lines = Split(line, " ")
Dim variableName, publicName, dataType, propertyProcedure As String
publicName = lines(0)
dataType = lines(1)
variableName = "m_" & publicName
propertyProcedure = _
String.Format( _
"Private {3} As {2}{0}" _
& "'''<summary></summary>{0}" _
& "Public Property {1} As {2}{0}" _
& " Get{0}" _
& " Return {3}{0}" _
& " End Get{0}" _
& " Set(ByVal Value As {2}){0}" _
& " {3} = Value{0}" _
& " End Set{0}" _
& "End Property", vbCrLf, publicName, _
dataType, variableName)
txt.Insert(propertyProcedure, _
vsInsertFlags.vsInsertFlagsInsertAtEnd)
txt.SmartFormat()
Catch ex As System.Exception
'MsgBox("There was an error while constructing Property code: " & _
' ex.ToString & ".", MsgBoxStyle.Critical, "New Property")
End Try
DTE.UndoContext.Close()
End Sub
See how to create and run macro if you don't know how. You can of course create a toolbar or menu button or assign keyboard shortcut to it.
January 21st, 2006 at 8:27 am
In VS2005, make sure to check out Code Snippets
http://www.google.com/search?q=visual+studio+code+snippets
February 19th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
These lines will prevent the document from losing focus in VS2008:
DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.StartOfLine(0)
DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.LineDown(False, 9) ‘the 9 comes from the numbers of lines in propertyProcedure
DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.EndOfLine()
DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.NewLine()
DTE.ActiveDocument.Activate() ‘ else the cursor is gone or so, a little bit strange (focus is lost)
DTE.UndoContext.Close()
It also sets the mouse cursor beneath the property which is very usefull when adding a lot of prop’s.
Thanks for the macro.
May 28th, 2010 at 9:35 am
Now writing properties get become easier. I use c#, so I changed the line as follows,
String.Format( _
“private {2} {3};{0}” _
& “/// {0}” _
& “public {2} {1} {4}{0}” _
& ” get {4} {0}” _
& ” return {3} ;{0} ” _
& ” {5}{0}” _
& ” set {4} {0}” _
& ” {3} = value ;{0}” _
& ” {5} {0}” _
& “{5}”, vbCrLf, publicName, _
dataType, variableName, “{”, “}”)