Build a Domain Specific Language with DSL Tools concluded - Generate a HTML report of your Model with your new Designer

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HTML artifacts are not the only type that can be generated. In this task we will see how to generate source code artifacts as well (as you may have guessed, the source
code for business entity designer was generated from the .dsldd and .dmd files in this manner). As an example, we will generate some simple Windows Forms-based
classes that might be used in the UI of an application supporting the business process defined in a business entity diagram.

1. Right-click on the BizEntityDebugging project in the Solution Explorer, and
   choose Add->Existing Item… from the context menu.
   
2. Type c:\dsl\EntityForm.cstemplate into the File name: box, and press Add.
   
3. Add the file c:\dsl\Program.cstemplate to the project in the same manner
   
4. Click on the EntityForm.cstemplate file in the Solution Explorer.
   
5. In the Properties window, enter the value TextTemplatingFileGenerator for the Custom Tool property, and press Enter.
   
   
   
   
6. Click on the Program.cstemplate file in the Solution Explorer.
   
7. In the Properties window, enter the value TextTemplatingFileGenerator for the Custom Tool property, and press Enter.
   
8. Code should be generated for both templates when the Custom Tool property is set. To regenerate the code, you can click on the Transform All Templates button in the Solution Explorer toolbar (circled in red below).
   
   
   
   
9. Set up the BizEntityDebugging solution to launch the BizEntityDebugging project. Right-click on the solution node in the Solution Explorer, and choose the Properties command.
   
   
   
   
   
10. Expand the Configuration Properties node in the Property Pages dialog box, and select the Configuration node. Check the Build checkbox.

11. Press OK on the Property Pages dialog box.
    
12. Press F5 to build and run the BizEntityDebugging project. You should see two forms pop up. Note that the title of each form corresponds to an entity defined in
    the business entity diagram, and there are editable text boxes corresponding to the
    attributes defined on each entity.
    
13. By now you may be running out of time for this lab, but if you still have a few extra minutes, there are a couple things you can do:
    
    
    1. Examine the .cstemplate files and the resulting generated code. Note that the template files look similar to the .ReportTemplate file we examined in Task 7, except that the text to be generated is C# code rather than HTML.
       
    2. Open the Entity.biz file and modify the diagram by adding more entities
       or attributes. Save the diagram and invoke Transform All Templates to
       see the effects of these changes on the generated artifacts.

Summary

In this lab, you explored how the Microsoft DSL Tools for Visual Studio 2005 can be used to build a visual designer with code generation. You learned more about the files that are used to define the concepts and notation for a Domain Specific Language, and the process that takes these files and generates a complete Visual Studio designer for that language. You learned some of the options for defining different aspects of the concepts and notation, and how the notation is mapped to the concepts. You ran the generated designer, and learned how to generate code and reports from the models that you created with it.

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Comments On: Build a Domain Specific Language with DSL Tools concluded

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