This blog post describes a novel method of generating boiler-plate MVVM code using codesnippet automation. You simply add attributes to your view model classes and the code is generated for you!
Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) has become the de facto pattern for Silverlight, WPF and WP7 applications, providing code that is easily tested and couples cleanly to the view via databinding. However, one small problem with MVVM is that it relies on the INotifyPropertyChanged (INPC) interface and the boiler-plate code which this entails.
This blog post describes a technique for implementing INPC and adding properties to your view model as easily as this:
[SnippetINotifyPropertyChanged]
[SnippetPropertyINPC(field = "_surname", type = "string", property = "Surname")]
[SnippetPropertyINPC(field = "_forename", type = "string", property = "Forename")]
public partial class PersonViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged
{
}
There are hundreds of blog posts that describe solutions to the problem of implementing INPC including simple options like a base-class that implements the INPC interface, the popular approach of using lambda expressions and more complex solutions involving Intermediate Language Weaving (AOP), or dynamic proxies. However, for the sake of simplicity, most of the projects I have worked on have opted for a manual approach – with individual developers using codesnippets if they so wish.
There are a couple of problems with codesnippets, firstly they are not refactor friendly, secondly they do not reduce boiler-plate code, they simply provide a method for adding this code more quickly!
Yesterday I published an article on codeproject which describes a technique for ‘automating’ code snippets, where you indicate the use of a codesnippet declaratively via an attribute, with the resultant code being generated in a partial class. Here I am going to show how it can be used to streamline the creation of ViewModels and results in the removal of boiler-plate code.
Read more: ScottLogic
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