Comments on: ASP.NET 2.0 Build Providers

By: ASP.NET 2.0 BuildProviders « Written materials

ASP.NET 2.0 BuildProviders « Written materials — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:49:21 +0000

[...] for this is called a Build Provider. The good thing is, you can create buildproviders yourself. This blogpost can get you started, a custom buildProvider is created to generate exception classes on the [...]

By: vijay gugnani, India

vijay gugnani, India — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 11:41:58 +0000

Hi Anderson,
Two images in the article are not accessible
1.http://notgartner.com/Downloads/HelperMethod.GIF
2.http://notgartner.com/Downloads/smile1.gif (doesn’t matter)

anyways, nice article

By: The ASP.NET RSS Toolkit « notgartner

The ASP.NET RSS Toolkit « notgartner — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 05:12:11 +0000

[...] RssBuildProvider; I’ve written about Build Providers before, in this case an RSS file is read in and it spins out a strongly-typed object model which matches the sub-item elements found in the feed. It actually does a pretty good job, I grabbed a feed from Digg and threw it in and it made sense of some of the RSS extensions that they offer. [...]

By: Mitch Denny

Mitch Denny — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 06:51:38 +0000

Hi Anderson,

Glad it was useful.

By: Anderson Imes

Anderson Imes — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 06:36:39 +0000

Thanks for this article. It was really helpful.

By: Anderson On... : Codesmith BuildProvider

Anderson On... : Codesmith BuildProvider — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 06:30:31 +0000

[...] I found a reference on Scott Watermasysk's blog about a project called "SubSonic" on CodePlex. I watched the video demo for the project and I was very impressed with quite a few things here.First off, the DAL that SubSonic generates is top notch. I think it's very flexible and a lot of programmers will like the flexibility that it provides. This is not what caught my eye, though.SubSonic has the ability to generate code on the fly at compile-time via something called a BuildProvider (I'd never heard of this). Basically, you just specify this custom BuildProvider in the web.config of your ASP.NET project and at design and/or compile time, the BuildProvider will connect to the specified database, and generate SubSonic's DAL model.Now here's where I got excited. SubSonic is great, but it limits you to using its own DAL template (which is again, the bee's knees), but what if you like the Wilson O/RMapper? Maybe you like .netTiers for your DALs. Wouldn't it be great to use a BuildProvider to leverage CodeSmith? Yes.So I wrote one.This gave me the chance to really learn about BuildProviders and also to take a look at the CodeSmith SDK while I was at it. I'd never used it before, but it was really easy to use.To use it, you simply add the BuildProvider to the web.config of your choice.I've specified that for this website, any files named with the .example extension (I know, original right?) should be compiled with the custom BuildProvider.To create the file to be compiled by the BuildProvider, simply create a text file with the aforementioned extension and insert lines with a Codesmith template file and an associated settings file (separated by the pipe, "|", symbol) in this form:| Example:c:MyCodesmithTemplate.cst|c:MyCodesmithTemplateSettings.xmlTo generate the settings file, open your template in Codesmith explorer, fill in the appropriate fields and then click "Save Property Set XML".Armed with this and the providers in the right spot, you should get almost immediate intellisense information back for the types that were just generated.I'm including the provider and a sample web project so that you can see how this works. I hope at the very least this will help someone understand BuildProviders. They are interesting and very powerful tools if used correctly.Some caviats:BuildProviders cannot function in Medium TrustI cannot provide a copy of the Codesmith assemblies with this project. You can get your own eval copy of Codesmith by visiting http://www.codesmithtools.com.If you do use an eval copy of Codesmith with this, you will get a Codesmith nag screen every time you compile. You have been warned. (I developed this using an eval copy, so I know a bit about it.)I provide no warrantees. Use at your own risk.There are most-likely bugs. Feel free to contact me about them anytime.Download: CodesmithAddonsReferencesSubSonic CommunityMSDN BuildProvider DocumentationASP.NET 2.0 Build Providers – Mitch Denny Filed under: Programming, ASP.NET [...]

By: Paul D. Murphy

Paul D. Murphy — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

damn Mitch you've done it again... I'm blown away. Thanks buddy.

The implications for this are staggering.

By: Mitch Denny

Mitch Denny — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Yeah – but Paul, you’d like anything with the words CodeDom, ASP.NET and voodoo in the same block of text

By: Dirk Rombauts

Dirk Rombauts — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Does this work only in web applications, or can I use this technique in winforms applications too?

By: Mitch Denny

Mitch Denny — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Hi Dirk,

I'm afraid not. Its part of the ASP.NET infrastructure.