grate.dotnet-template 0.4.3

Introduction

This repo contains a dotnet new template for grate, an opinionated example on how to use grate with dotnet projects to organize the SQL scripts.

Getting Started

To change/develop templates here, the following resources are recommended:

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/nuget/create-packages/creating-a-package#from-a-convention-based-working-directory
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/msbuild/how-to-extend-the-visual-studio-build-process?view=vs-2019
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/custom-templates
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tutorials/cli-templates-create-item-template

There are more good samples on how to create dotnet new templates here: https://github.com/dotnet/dotnet-template-samples

A brief walk-through of the grate.dotnet-template project.

This project is a template project. That means that it is a template that contains templates for other projects. So, it contains two csproj files: The project file itself, grate-dotnet-template, and a .csproj file in the templates folder, which is the basis of the new projects.

Both projects (ab)use .csproj files to store just SQL files, and some related tools, but in a little different ways. In both cases, however, we override the default Build and ResolveReferences targets of msbuild, to try to avoid creating any DLLs, which we don't want. There are also a few properties that makes dotnet pack include content files in the output, and make the result appropriate for distributing SQL files instead.

The template project includes a .template.config folder, with template settings (metadata, replacement strings, etc). This is not included in the resulting project from running the dotnet new command. However, the rest of the templates folder, including the .config folder, which specifies a .net local tool to use (grate), is included.

Packaging the template

To package up the template, simply run

dotnet pack

The resulting .nupkg in the package folder contains a template that can be installed on client machines, and used for creating new projects of this type. This nupkg should be pushed to a nuget repo.

Installing the template

To use the template, you first need to install it. If you are developing the template itself, locally, you can install it from the .nupkg file directly:

dotnet new install <PATH_TO_NUPKG_FILE>

e.g, in the grate-dotnet-template folder:

dotnet pack
dotnet new install ./package/grate.dotnet-template.0.0.1.nupkg

If you just want to use the latest published version of the package, just install it using the package Id (assuming you or someone else have pushed it to a nuget repo you have in your sources):

dotnet new install grate.dotnet-template

More details here on the different ways to install a template: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/custom-templates#installing-a-template

Using the template

Given that you have installed the template, as described above, you can use the template to create new database projects:

cd /tmp/
mkdir TestProject
cd TestProject
dotnet new grate --database MyDatabase

This will give you a new project skeleton in the current directory, with a couple of scripts to run them with grate too.

To run the database migration (which grate calls it), you need to set a couple of environment variables:

• ConnectionStrings__MyDatabase
• GrateEnvironment

then you can just run the Deploy.ps1 script. It should install grate as a .net local tool, and call it with the correct parameters.

Packaging your new project

The template creates a project fit for packaging as a .nupkg and shipping. To package it, just run

nuget pack

in your newly created project directory. This should create a .nupkg file (which is simply a zip-file with a special file structure and a different extension), which can be downloaded somewhere (build server, etc), and run.

Using you packaged project

To use your project, use some way of downloading the .nupkg, and just use the files to run the install scripts. You can use nuget, but it's not a necessity, you can just download the file from somewhere, and treat it as a zip file, if that better suits your needs.

Example, using NuGet:

❯ nuget install MyDatabase -OutputDirectory somewhere -DirectDownload -Source /tmp/MyDatabase/package/
❯ cd ./somewhere/MyDatabase.1.0.0/content/
❯ ./Deploy.ps1