Question

I’m working on a project where I need to construct instances of .cs files dynamically.

I use interfaces to structure the data, something like this (they do vary)

public interface IMetaClass
{
    string ParentName { get; set; }
    string Namespace { get; set; }
    string ClassName { get; set; }
    string FriendlyName { get; set; }
    string Description { get; set; }
}

I also have classes that inherit from these interfaces

public class XavierMetaClass : IMetaClass
{
    public string ParentName { get; set; }
    // ...
}

Example of construct and fill

var cell = new XavierMetaClass
{
    ParentName = mc.Parent.Name,
    Namespace = mc.Namespace,
    ClassName = mc.Name,
    FriendlyName = mc.FriendlyName,
    Description = mc.Description + "test"
};

What I would like to do is take this and construct a new .cs file with the data stored in the variable above with a result looking something like this.

public class CellPhone : IMetaClass
{
    public string ParentName { get { return "CatalogEntry"; } }
    public string Namespace { get { return "Mediachase.Commerce.Catalog.User"; } }
    public string ClassName { get { return "CellPhone"; } }
    public string FriendlyName { get { return "Cell sPhone"; } }
    public string Description { get { return "Contains meta data about phone test"; } }

    private readonly IMetaClass _metaClass;

    public CellPhone()
    {
        // Noop 
    }

    public CellPhone(IMetaClass metaClass)
    {
        _metaClass = metaClass;
    }
}

Are there any know frameworks of methods to help me achieve this?

Thanks

Answer 1

In short you have a few options.

1. CodeDom (good list of links and documentation from Microsoft here)
2. T4 Templating
3. Custom Templating (this would be like building text files with little snippets and just piecing together the file with a tree of classes that emit those little pieces)

I have done all three and I would recommend T4 templating, and here is an exhaustive example on how to use it.

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/269362/Using-T4-Templates-to-generate-custom-strongly-typ

But you need to be willing to dig in and learn it because there is quite a bit to grasp.