Introduction

In this page you will find some brief description on how to build Visual Studio.Net Project Templates for DotNetNuke.

The main goal for this project was to provide a simple yet powerful way to extend VS.NET to support DotNetNuke module creation. As the DotNetNuke framework increases its complexity and features being on top of best practices for coding and developing modules can at times a bit difficult. With these templates, VS.NET includes new features directly focussed to DNN developers.

Another great benefit of this solution is it eases the task of starting a new module from a 'blank project':

• what should I do first?
• what files do I need?
• how should I structure the project?
• how a DotNetNuke module is built?

The templates will build a default skeleton for the new project, including the most common files needed, prewritten code in these files with the required structure for a DotNetNuke module, ...

Visual Basic and Visual C#
A template is nothing more than a couple of files of any kind that get created when you select either New Project or Add New Item in VS.NET. Any of the builtin options you find in these dialogs are templates that can be modified and extended at your will. All you need is the proper understanding of its internals. Keep in mind too, that a template that generates code is highly tied to the development language of choice. So for example in a VB template you have to provide the pattern .vb file that will be the base for the generated code.
I started these templates with only a VB.NET version, but due to 'popular' demand there's now a corresponding VC# counterpart. Both VB and C# templates are installed in the same way, and there's no need to remove any of them. Just use what language you prefer. They offer the same functionallity.

Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2002 Users
The VS.NET 2002 Templates are a conversion of the 2003 version. I'll not maintain this version since I'm not able to test it. Look on the VS.NET 2002 Templates page for the changes needed to make the VS.NET 2003 Templates work on the previous version.

Note that this is not a finished and closed work. As I polish my own framework I'll be upgrading these templates to reflect what I find helpfull. I'm publishing it mainly to get some reactions, suggestions, extensions, modifications, on what I've done. These templates share a common way of doing things (naming conventions, structure, functions,...). This structure was in someway discussen in this thread on the ASP.NET Forums. I recommend you to read the posts in this thread to gain a better understanding of what's going in. If you have any suggestion, question or improvement don't hesitate to contact me. I'll do my best to answer any questions and will be very happy to get some help on this work.

Note. There's also a download of CodeSmith templates to ease on the creation of the code (database and VB.NET). It's based on some modifications from a great work from Scott McCulloch.