Camel Case the project name for a Visual Studio Project Template

Question

I am trying to make a Visual Studio Project Template. I can easily replace the names of things I want to have the same name as the project using $safeprojectname$

So if my project was named WidgetHunter and I named a file $safeprojectname$.js it would be called WidgetHunter.js when the project was created.

But what if I wanted to name the file widgetHunter.js or widget-hunter.js?

Is there away to make a new variable that does not have a static value? (I need to perform a string operation on the supplied project name.)

Answer 1

So this will not be as straight forward as you allude. Project Templating is not very powerful, it's basic replacement, you can't really run code AFAIK.

However, you can "easily" add a Wizard Step (IWizard) that adds additional keys to the replacement dictionary. For example, you could add $safeprojectnameforjs$ which has the manipulated value.

 public class ExampleWizard : IWizard
 {
     public void RunStarted(object automationObject, Dictionary<string, string> replacementsDictionary, WizardRunKind runKind, object[] customParams)
    {
         replacementsDictionary.Add("safeprojectnameforjs",
            YourCustomMethodForManipulatingName(replacementsDictionary["safeprojectname"])
    }

    // there are a few other IWizard methods you'll need to 
    // implement but don't need to do anything in
 }

To wire in your ExampleWizard, you'll need to add a tag in your .vstemplate

<VSTemplate>
  <WizardExtension>
     <Assembly>ExampleWizard.ExampleWizard, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,     
        PublicKeyToken=a76e3e75702e3ee4</Assembly>
      <FullClassName>ExampleWizard.ExampleWizard</FullClassName>
   </WizardExtension>
</VSTemplate>

Note: You'll need to have your Wizard in an assembly. Easiest way is to create a new Class Library project. Also, it will need to be signed (at least, pretty sure that's still a requirement).

Finally, you'll need to update your VSIX manifest, so that you have the Wizard assembly wired up as an assembly dependency:

<PackageManifest>
   <Assets>
      <Asset Type="Microsoft.VisualStudio.Assembly" d:Source="Project" d:ProjectName="ExampleWizard.ExampleWizard" Path="|ExampleWizard.ExampleWizard|" AssemblyName="|ExampleWizard.ExampleWizard;AssemblyName|" />    
   </Assets>
</PackageManifest>