Configuration Section Designer

NEW POST: csd project not exist

wiesel3 — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 05:28:07 GMT

I put it in <My Documents>\Visual Studio 2008\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#\

It works!

Thank you.

NEW POST: csd project not exist

jelled — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:03:27 GMT

Hi Wiesel,

Indeed, it's probably because you have the German edition installed. I haven't tested this but you might be able to fix it by going into the following directory and coping the ConfigurationSectionProject.zip file from there:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\ProjectTemplates\CSharp\1033

You can then put it in either of these:

The same directory tree as above but using the German Locale Id instead of "1033" (see if there's another Locale Id present and copy it into that one)
<My Documents>\Visual Studio 2008\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#\

The zip file is in effect the project template, and I believe putting it in either of these locations should automatically pick it up. Let me know if it works :-)

Thanks,

Jelle

COMMENTED ISSUE: Instance returns null when used in different AppDomain

jelled — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:07:01 GMT

Hi,

In my application I create new AppDomains and each AppDomain has its own config file. When I use the generated code in an AppDomain different then the default one the "Instance" property returns null, other configurations (wcf, appsettings...) are working correctly.

Is this a bug or am I missing something?

Thanks,
Steven Hillaert
Comments: ** Comment from web user: jelled **

Hi Steven,

Sorry for getting back to you so late. I've tried out your scenario and couldn't reproduce it. I've created a separate AppDomain with a different config file, and in that AppDomain I call the "Instance" property - and it correctly returns a configuration instance I can use to read out the alternative config file...

Can you let me know more details or upload a sample so I can double check?

Thanks!

Jelle

NEW POST: csd project not exist

wiesel3 — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:28:51 GMT

Hi, i have installed the msi successful. In the toolbox can see Configuration Section Designer region, but i can't find it under NewProjects. I have installed a german SV2008. Can this be the problem?
How can i create a csd project by hand?

Thanks!

CREATED ISSUE: Instance returns null when used in different AppDomain

hillaerts — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:22:04 GMT

COMMENTED FEATURE: Support for Visual Studio 2005?

jelled — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:38:06 GMT

It looks like all of the required parts are available for VS 2005, would it be possible to install 'csd' so that it will also run under vs 2005?
Comments: ** Comment from web user: jelled **

JakeTheSnake: yes, if I'm not mistaken, it should install and run just fine on the VS 2008 Shell.

COMMENTED FEATURE: Support for Visual Studio 2005?

JakeTheSnake — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:16:37 GMT

It looks like all of the required parts are available for VS 2005, would it be possible to install 'csd' so that it will also run under vs 2005?
Comments: ** Comment from web user: JakeTheSnake **

Would that be possible to use it with Visual Studio 2008 Shell?

UPDATED RELEASE: 1.1 (mrt 19, 2008)

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:51:09 GMT

Configuration Section Designer is a Visual Studio add-in that allows you to graphically design .NET Configuration Sections and automatically generates all the required code and a schema definition (XSD) for them.

This 1.1 release includes support for configuration elements to have their own namespace. It also fixes an issue with the "global::" prefix that wasn't consistently used.

!! Important note: this release has a bug in it that will show a "Package Load Error" if you don't have the Visual Studio SDK installed. Please use the 1.1.1 release instead!

NEW POST: Package Load Failure

JackieLin — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 03:14:46 GMT

Very good to know that.
I just introduced CSD in my chinese blog. Some people downloaded 1.1 but can not work fine. I had to told them use 1.0.2. :-(

COMMENTED ISSUE: Package Load Failure

agassi001 — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 15:16:37 GMT

The msi is installed successfully,
After ConfigurationSectionDesigner is added in my project, csd and 3 .tt file do created
but I received an alert as below:

---------------------------
Microsoft Visual Studio
---------------------------
Package Load Failure

Package 'Microsoft.Samples.DslTools.ConfigurationSectionDesigner.ConfigurationSectionDesignerPackage, Microsoft.Samples.DslTools.ConfigurationSectionDesigner.DslPackage, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=5181b181589b6989' has failed to load properly ( GUID = {9F16956E-2232-4F80-9EBB-4165929EF3EF} ). Please contact package vendor for assistance. Application restart is recommended, due to possible environment corruption. Would you like to disable loading this package in the future? You may use 'devenv /resetskippkgs' to re-enable package loading.

//vs2008, vista ultimate
I've checked the GAC that the two dll are already installed , I've no idea what's wrong with it
how can I get it work
Comments: ** Comment from web user: agassi001 **

It works for me, thx a lot

COMMENTED ISSUE: Package Load Failure

GlenH — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:35:40 GMT

@jelled
Thank you! That fixed it for me. :-)

UPDATED RELEASE: 1.1 (mrt 19, 2008)

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:37:40 GMT

Configuration Section Designer is a Visual Studio add-in that allows you to graphically design .NET Configuration Sections and automatically generates all the required code and a schema definition (XSD) for them.

This 1.1 release includes support for configuration elements to have their own namespace. It also fixes an issue with the "global::" prefix that wasn't consistently used.

*Important Note*
This release has a bug in it that will show a "Package Load Error" if you don't have the Visual Studio SDK installed. Please use the 1.1.1 release instead!

NEW POST: Package Load Failure

jelled — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:34:57 GMT

I have fixed this in the 1.1.1 release that I just uploaded, so that new installer should no longer show the Package Load Failure. I forgot to test the scenario for people that don't have the SDK installed - I'm sorry for the inconvenience!

UPDATED RELEASE: 1.1.1 (mrt 21, 2008)

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:31:44 GMT

Configuration Section Designer is a Visual Studio add-in that allows you to graphically design .NET Configuration Sections and automatically generates all the required code and a schema definition (XSD) for them.

This 1.1.1 release fixes a problem with the 1.1 release that would show a "Package Load Failure" when used in Visual Studio without the SDK installed.

*Important Note*
As a result of the bug fix, the internal CSD version has been reverted to 1.0.0.0 so if you had previously changed the .csd and the .csd.diagram files from 1.0.0.0 to 1.1.0.0, you need to change them back to 1.0.0.0.

UPDATED WIKI: Home

jelled — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:29:03 GMT

Project Description

A Visual Studio add-in that allows you to graphically design .NET Configuration Sections and automatically generates all the required code and a schema definition (XSD) for them.

Requirements

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition or better.

Usage

After installation, you have a new Item Type in Visual Studio named "ConfigurationSectionDesigner" (if you want to design the configuration section in an existing project) and a new Project Type named "Configuration Section Project" (if you want to start with a new project). In both cases, you get a number of files:

ConfigurationSection.csd: the designer itself.
ConfigurationSectionCode.tt: a text template code generator that generates the C# code for the configuration section.
ConfigurationSectionSample.tt: generates a sample configuration file.
ConfigurationSectionSchema.tt: generates the XSD schema representing the configuration section.

The text templates are automatically transformed when you save the designer.

Working with the Designer

If you open the .csd file in Visual Studio, you get a blank design surface onto which you can drag Configuration Sections, Configuration Elements and Configuration Element Collections from the Toolbox. Before you begin, you should right-click the design surface and select Properties, then set the Namespace and Xml Schema Namespace (if you forget, validation errors will point you to these properties).

With all the required configuration classes added, set their properties and add configuration attributes and elements by right-clicking the elements and selecting the proper menu commands. Attributes are usually simple types (string, int, boolean, ...) that are external, where Elements are other types defined in the designer, e.g. to make one configuration element contain another configuration element.

Defining Types

When setting the Type property of an Attribute, you get a dropdown that contains a number of pre-initialized types. It is possible to add more types to this dropdown by opening the Configuration Section Explorer window (if it is not visible, go to the View menu, Other Windows, Configuration Section Explorer). You will see a node that contains all the configuration elements (also shown on the design surface), and a node that contains all the type definitions (not shown on the designer). If you right-click the root node, you can add new External Types (e.g. System.String).

You can also define Enumerated Types (enums), for which code is also generated and which are treated specially when the XSD is generated (so you get full IntelliSense on the XML file with all the options of the enumeration).

Defining Custom Child Elements

Each Configuration Element has a propery named "Has Custom Child Elements". This controls some code that is generated and changes the generated XSD to support child configuration elements (XML nodes) that can vary and aren't known at design-time yet.

Suppose you have a logging section and a logger that is instantiated through reflection. That logger instance then parses the inner XML to define its settings.

<logger type="Logging.FileLogger, CustomLoggingAssembly">
  <fileOptions filename="c:\log.txt" buffered="true" />
</logger>

So the <fileOptions> tag is only something that the FileLogger class would know about. I might as well plug in another logger type without the <fileOptions> but with <databaseOptions> instead. So the child element is custom depending on the logger type.

The "Has Custom Child Elements" flag on the Configuration Element does two things to help in this regard:

It generates an "OnDeserializeUnrecognizedElement" method in the ConfigurationElement class so that a partial class definition can implement the required logic to handle the child XML. You will notice that the generated code does not compile because it calls a "HandleUnrecognizedElement" method that you need to implement (the point where the compilation error occurs contains comments on how to implement that).
It indicates in the generated XSD for the Configuration Section that the XML node that has the flag set can have any inner content (otherwise the XML with the inner tag would not be valid according to the XSD).

UPDATED RELEASE: 1.1 (mrt 19, 2008)

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:28:35 GMT

Configuration Section Designer is a Visual Studio add-in that allows you to graphically design .NET Configuration Sections and automatically generates all the required code and a schema definition (XSD) for them.

This 1.1 release includes support for configuration elements to have their own namespace. It also fixes an issue with the "global::" prefix that wasn't consistently used.

UPDATED RELEASE: 1.1.1 (mrt 21, 2008)

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:27:12 GMT

COMMENTED ISSUE: Package Load Failure

jelled — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:26:28 GMT

Source code checked in

jelled — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:26:27 GMT

Updated to match bug fix release of CSD version 1.1.1

CLOSED ISSUE: Package Load Failure

jelled — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:16:36 GMT