T4Config

A down and dirty way to have strongly typed Config Settings and Connection Strings in your projects by using T4.

In a nutshell we create an interface called IConfigurations/ IConnectionStrings, so you can do all of your fancy DI/IoC stuff, and a concrete implementation called Configurations/ ConnectionStrings. (both names totally customizable.

The T4 template loops through the web.config (or app.config) appSettings and generates a read only property for each key and returns the values placed in the settings value.

If you have a configuration section of appSettings which looked like this;

<appSettings>
    <add key="Key1" value="value1" />
    <add key="Key2" value="2212DE83-DFC3-44A8-81BA-0A8D132C1F79" />
    <add key="Key3" value="42" />
</appSettings>

After the T4 file compiles you would end up with this;

    public interface IConfigurations
    {
        string Key1 { get; }

        Guid Key2 { get; }

        int Key3 { get; }

        bool Key4 { get; }

    }

    public class Configurations : IConfigurations
    {
        private static readonly Lazy<string> _key1 = new Lazy<string>(() => GetSetting("Key1"));

        private static readonly Lazy<Guid> _key2 = new Lazy<Guid>(() => new Guid(GetSetting("Key2")));

        private static readonly Lazy<int> _key3 = new Lazy<int>(() => Convert.ToInt32(GetSetting("Key3")));

        private static readonly Lazy<bool> _key4 = new Lazy<bool>(() => Convert.ToBoolean(GetSetting("Key4")));


	public virtual string Key1  { get; } = _key1.Value;
	public virtual Guid Key2  { get; } = _key2.Value;
	public virtual int Key3  { get; } = _key3.Value;
	public virtual bool Key4  { get; } = _key4.Value;

        public static string GetSetting(string key)
        {
            return ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[key];
        }
    }

    public interface IConnectionStrings
    {
        string LocalSqlServer { get; }
    }

    public class ConnectionStrings : IConnectionStrings
    {
        private static readonly Lazy<string> _localSqlServer = new Lazy<string>(() => ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["LocalSqlServer"].ConnectionString);

	public virtual string LocalSqlServer { get; } = _localSqlServer.Value;
    }

As you can see by this output, same goes for connection strings as well!

Install

Can be install from Nuget as well;

Install-Package T4Config

https://www.nuget.org/packages/T4Config/

How do I do it

• Copy the Configurations.tt file to the src directory of your project (or install via nuget).
• Right click on the Configurations.tt file and click "Run Custom Tool".

Enjoy!