Visual Studio Macros

Visual Studio Macros might make you code faster. Consider using macros for any thing that you do repeatedly;

For example, I have a static configuration class and want to add properties to this class with a macro;

Think that I have line like following in somewhere of my project;

var myValue = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["MyValue"];

And it is much more flexible if I do it like the following. This will provide me strongly typed access to configuration values, but I need to write one property for each configuration value, and that’s the point where the power of macros helps me:

var myValue = GdmWebConfiguration.MyValue;

public static class MyConfiguration

{

    public static string MyValue

    {

        get

        {

            return GetBool("MyValue");

        }

    }

}

here is the macro code block that I have;

Sub addPropToMyConfig()

    DTE.ItemOperations.OpenFile("MyConfiguraiton.cs")

    DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.Text = "        public static string " + ClipboardText

    DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.NewLine()

    DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.Text = "{"

    DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.NewLine()

    DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.Text = "get"

    DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.NewLine()

    DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.Text = "{"

    DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.NewLine()

    DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.Text = "return GetString(""" + ClipboardText + """);"

    DTE.ActiveDocument.Save()

End Sub

  I just double click on the string “MyValue” on the following line and make ctrl+c (copy to clipboard) and ctrl+alt+k (I have assigned this shortcut to my macro) and in MyConfiguration.cs the property I need gets created immediately.

var myValue = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["MyValue"];

And you can manually convert this line to MyConfiguraition.MyValue or you can use another macro ;) What I do is; I select ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["MyValue"]; (without copying; just select ) part and run this macro;

Sub GdmConfAdd()

        DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.Text = "MyConfiguration." + ClipboardText

End Sub

In this blog post you will see how ClipboardText variable implemented;

http://svenmaes.blogspot.com/2007/03/access-clipboard-from-visual-studio.html