Running a T4 template using C#
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23-10-2019 - |
Question
I have T4 template (mycode.tt) which generates a cs file. I usually right click the tt file and select RunCustomTool which internally takes an xml file and generate code for me. Now i want to run the custom tool using a c# windows application. So onclick of a button i want to run the Custom Tool . Is it possible to run the CustomTool from c#.
Edit:
I have 2 tt files and one of them doesn't have a codebehind cs file. But another has a .cs file attached with it and i am invoking the second file's TransformText() method from the first .tt file. So i need to invoke the first file.So i cannot use the TransformText() method. Is there a way to dynamically call the textTemplate file ?
Solution
I'd recommend the preprocessed route as answered above by @jb_.
As an alternative, if you need your templates to still be editable without a compile step for use with your custom C# application, and the application will only be deployed on machines alongside Visual Studio, you can write a custom host.
OTHER TIPS
You can easily achieve it, when you using VS2010. If you add a new file to the project, choose a preprocessed text template file. You can edit the template just as normal. Instead of generating the output directly, the file generates the code that is generated normally. I know it sounds confusing. But what you see in your output file is the code generated by the text templating toolkit to get your output (more or less).
This is a short example of a preprocessed text template named "TestTemplate.tt" and how do you use it in your code:
The tt-file:
<#@ template language="C#" #> Some output.
Code:
using System; using System.Diagnostics; namespace Test { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { TestTemplate testTemplate = new TestTemplate(); Debug.Print(testTemplate.TransformText()); } } }