Customization of Project and Item Templates - Part II

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Introduction

When you add a new project item in a project, whether the item file is a design file or code file, the project item template will generate initial designing or coding in the file. We can customize the item template to create a common initial design settings or coding to be generated.

Background

Part I of this article can be viewed at this link.

Creation of Item Template

Here we are creating a new ASP.NET web application which contains customized item template:

Create a new ASP.NET web application naming MyAspxTemplate.
Add a new item named ViewPage.aspx under Views folder.
Create initial sample design in ViewPage.aspx page.

Save the project.
Export the item template by clicking Export Template under File menu.
Select Item Template and Click Next.

Select the ViewPage.aspx checkbox item to Export and Click Next:

Select Item References to be included with the Template, if any:

Enter Template name and Description and Click Finish.

Implementing the New Item Template

Create a new ASP.NET web application using Myaspxtemplate

Create a new ASP.NET web application.
Add a new .aspx page using Myaspxtemplate.
You can see that the initial design was generated in the new page.

Conclusion

You can also pass custom parameters to the templates by editing the .vstemplate file of the item template project. We will see the creation of text template generators to generate multiple files for project item templates in the next part of this article.