Creating Code for Coding

andalmeida

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18 Sep 2011GPL33 min read

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Creating code to create code

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Introduction

Have you ever felt like doing the same tasks or writing similar code repetitive times? For example, creating a new web application, creating a database, running aspnet_regsql.exe, creating roles, writing web.config, creating a new form for login, coding the login...
What about having it at once with one click at all?

Background

Some years ago, I was faced with an "easy request"; convert an Excel file into an application.
The deadline was one week, easy huh?
Opening the Excel file, it was nothing less than hundreds of sheets, that day I decided to create a virtual programmer, i.e., code to create code. In one week, the application was done.

How It Works?

Basically, the idea of the virtual programmer has the following features:

Read a template file, substitute tags, write an output file
Perform configuration operations

The current article shows up how to get in one click the following tasks/code:

Create a database
Run aspnet regsql to create membership tables
Create web.config
Create some roles and users
Create the Login form and code behind
Have a startup project with SQL Authentication

Note: Yes! There are many tools to perform the same task! But the idea here is the approach of creating code for coding helping to get rid of doing repetitive work and saving time. It means more time for coffee. :-)

Creating a Database

Our first task is to create a database, we can do this by the following code:

...
SqlCommand command = connection.CreateCommand();
command.CommandText = "CREATE DATABASE " + dbname;
connection.Open();
command.ExecuteNonQuery();
connection.Close();		
...		 
// ! removed validations in the example above

Executing aspnet.regsql

Now we should run aspnet_regsql manually once again. Instead, we will call SqlServices which will perform the same operation to create the aspnet tables in the DB.

...
SqlServices.Install(dbname, SqlFeatures.All, connectionstring);
...

Creating the web.config

The next task should be edit manually the web.config... But why?
We will read a template file, i.e. web_config.txt, perform a tag replacement and then save the output web.config file.

sContents = TextFileHelper.ReadTextFile("web_config.txt"); 
sContents = sContents.Replace("@CONNECTIONSTRING@", connectionstring);
sContents = sContents.Replace("@APPLICATIONNAME@", applicationname); 
...
TextFileHelper.WriteTextFile("web.config", sContents);  
...

Adding Roles and Users

To add roles and users to the application, we do have again template files. They are configure_aspx.txt and configure_aspx_cs.txt.
The concept is the same: Read the template file, substitute the tags and create the output files configure.aspx and configure.aspx.cs.

sContents = TextFileHelper.ReadTextFile("configure_aspx_cs.txt"); 
sContents = sContents.Replace("@ROLE1@", role1);
sContents = sContents.Replace("@ROLE2@", role2); 
...
sContents = sContents.Replace("@USER1@", user1);
sContents = sContents.Replace("@USER2@", user2); 
... 
sContents = sContents.Replace("@USER1ROLE@", user1role);
sContents = sContents.Replace("@USER2ROLE@", user2role); 
... 
TextFileHelper.WriteTextFile("configure.aspx.cs", sContents);  
...

The code on configure.aspx.cs:

UserHelper.AddRole("@ROLE1@");
UserHelper.AddRole("@ROLE2@");
...
UserHelper.CreateUser("@USER1@", "@PWD1@", "@ROLE1@");
UserHelper.CreateUser("@USER2@", "@PWD2@", "@ROLE2@"); 
...

After running the code above, it just calls the configure page configure.aspx through the browser and voila, you do have the skeleton of an ASP.NET application with SQL Authentication.