Introduction
A Text Template Transformation Toolkit (T4) template is a general-purpose template engine; using T4 we can generate C#, VB code, XML, HTML, or text of any kind. The code generation is used in Visual Studio in technologies like MVC, Entity Framework, LINQ to SQL, and many others that use those templates. The Entity Framework supports extension or manipulation of the code generation using the T4 template. In short, a T4 text template is a mixture of text blocks and control logic that can be generated into a text file. The control logic is written as fragments of C# or VB program code.
T4 Templates in Entity Framework
In Entity Framework, we can use T4 Templates to extend and manipulate code generation. In the following example, I have added a simple entity model within a console application.
Now to add a T4 Template for our entity model. We have two ways to add the T4 Template for our entity model; they are:
This will also show a security warning described above.
The only difference is that in this second case you must replace the entity model name manually in the model.tt file as shown below. And you must also delete the code in model.designer.cs manually.
Now all our code is within; our new T4 template file has the extension .tt.
Conclusion
T4 templates enable us to implement code generation. A T4 template is very useful in a large and complicated model. With the T4 template, if we change the table name in a database, we don't need to find and change the name of the corresponding C# class. Instead of this, we can re-execute the template and regenerate the class definitions; just open the model.tt file then save it, it will automatically generate new code for us. We can also force a template transformation by right-clicking on a template and selecting "Run Custom Tool". It is also the flexibility of customization and total control.
How to use Sample
To run the sample, you must change the connection string that points to the testing database. And the project also contains the database table script.