T4 FieldName in camelCase without Underscore? - t4

Question

I'm using T4 to generate some class definitions and find that I'm getting an underscore in front of my field names.
I have set
code.CamelCaseFields = true;
just to be safe (even though I understand that's the default) but still end up with _myField rather than myField.
How can I generate a field name without the '_' character?
Also, where is the documentation for T4? I'm finding plenty of resources such as
Code Generation and Text Templates and numerous blogs, but I have not found the class-by-class, property-by-property documentation.

Answer 1

You're probably talking about EF4 Self Tracking Entities. The CodeGenerationTools class is included via the <## include file="EF.Utility.CS.ttinclude"#> directive, which you can find at "[VSInstallDir]\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Entity Framework Tools\Templates\Includes\EF.Utility.CS.ttinclude".
The FieldName function is defined as such:
private string FieldName(string name)
{
if (CamelCaseFields)
{
return "_" + CamelCase(name);
}
else
{
return "_" + name;
}
}
The "_" is hardcoded in the function. Coding your own shouldn't be difficult. Note that the CodeGenerationTools class is specific to this ttinclude file and isn't a generic and embedded way to generate code in T4.

Answer 2

I've written the following method to make first character upper case, remove spaces/underscores and make next character upper case. See samples below. Feel free to use.
private string CodeName(string name)
{
name = name.ToLowerInvariant();
string result = name;
bool upperCase = false;
result = string.Empty;
for (int i = 0; i < name.Length; i++)
{
if (name[i] == ' ' || name[i] == '_')
{
upperCase = true;
}
else
{
if (i == 0 || upperCase)
{
result += name[i].ToString().ToUpperInvariant();
upperCase = false;
}
else
{
result += name[i];
}
}
}
return result;
}
input/output samples:
first_name = FirstName,
id = Id,
status message = StatusMessage

Answer 3

This is good advice however it doesn't help you in knowing WHERE the right place to put such a function is...
Is there any guidance on DECOMPOSING the EF .tt files or stepping through the output generation to see how it builds the output?
I was able to use the above function successfully by plugging it into a function called
(Ef4.3)
public string Property(EdmProperty edmProperty)
Which appears to be used to output the lines like "public int fieldname { get; set; }"
and changed the 3rd (index {2}) param to the formating to wrap with the function to modify the name, like this:
_typeMapper.GetTypeName(edmProperty.TypeUsage), //unchanged
UnderScoreToPascalCase(_code.Escape(edmProperty)), //wrapped "name"
_code.SpaceAfter(Accessibility.ForGetter(edmProperty)), // unchanged
This is not perfect, eg: it doesn't keep existing "Ucasing" and doesn't care about things like this:
customerIP
outputs: Customerip
which IMO is not very readable...
but its better than what I WAS looking at which was a nightmare because the database was intermingled mess of camelCase, PascalCase and underscore separation, so pretty horrific.
anyway hope this helps someone...