[DataMember] Code Snippet

So I am sitting here, feeding the cold I’ve had, and I found myself creating a DataContract – something that got even easier with the introduction of Automatic Properties in .NET 3.0.

I tend to forget about the Visual Studio feature of Code Snippets, but I am usually reminded again anytime I see a presentation by an experienced technical presenter – then I forget again.

Today, I happened to remember our last instructor making heavy use of the ‘prop’ expanding code snippet during demos and thought - “Hey, I bet they have one for automagically creating properties marked with the DataMember attribute”.  Well, I didn’t immediately see it and asking the great information oracle didn’t reveal anything interesting, so I set out to copy the existing ‘prop’ code snippet.

Turns out it was even easier than I expected – it took longer to write this post than it did to create the snippet.

Save the following into a file named dmprop.snippet (or something suitable) and drop it into your C:\Users\xxxxx\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Code Snippets\Visual C#\My Code Snippets folder, and voila!  Visual Studio should automatically detect the new snippet.  If not, you can add manually via Tools | Code Snippets Manager.

Now you can type ‘dmprop’ [tab] [tab] and get the same property expansion code snippet as ‘prop’, but marked with a DataMember attribute.  Cheesy, but I figured it was appropriate as I was snacking on some sharp cheddar..

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<CodeSnippets  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2005/CodeSnippet">
    <CodeSnippet Format="1.0.0">
        <Header>
            <Title>dmprop</Title>
            <Shortcut>dmprop</Shortcut>
            <Description>Code snippet for an automatically implemented [DataMember] property</Description>
            <Author>Your name here</Author>
            <SnippetTypes>
                <SnippetType>Expansion</SnippetType>
            </SnippetTypes>
        </Header>
        <Snippet>
            <Declarations>
                <Literal>
                    <ID>type</ID>
                    <ToolTip>Property type</ToolTip>
                    <Default>int</Default>
                </Literal>
                <Literal>
                    <ID>property</ID>
                    <ToolTip>Property name</ToolTip>
                    <Default>MyProperty</Default>
                </Literal>
            </Declarations>
            <Code Language="csharp"><![CDATA[[DataMember]
            public $type$ $property$ { get; set; }$end$]]>
            </Code>
        </Snippet>
    </CodeSnippet>
</CodeSnippets>