Xamarin.Tips – Visual Studio Code Templates/Snippets for MVVM Light

This is a short set of freebies. If you use MVVM Light in your Xamarin or Windows projects, this will save you loads of time. I’ve created a few short cuts for Visual Studio to generate code templates for your ViewModels!

If you aren’t using things like prop or ctor, then you should be! Why write out all that code when you don’t have to!

Take these snippets, and install them into your VS instance. There is documentation here on how to do this: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms165394.aspx.

For those of you who are not aware of the pain of creating large ViewModel classes, this is what an ordinary property might look like:

private string _myText;
public string MyText
{
    get
    {
        return _myText;
    {
    set
    {
        Set(() => MyText, ref _myText, value);
    }
}

And then setting up a Command:

private ICommand _myCommand;
public ICommand MyCommand
{
    get
    {
        return _myCommand ?? (_myCommand = new RelayCommand(() => { ... }));
    }
}

So let’s look at some templates. I have a repo up here where I’ve added the two we will talk about here, but I’d love to see more in there!

First, the bindable property:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<CodeSnippets  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2005/CodeSnippet">
	<CodeSnippet Format="1.0.0">
		<Header>
			<Title>propb</Title>
			<Shortcut>propb</Shortcut>
			<Description>Code snippet for an automatically implemented bindable property
Language Version: C# 3.0 or higher</Description>
			<Author>Microsoft Corporation</Author>
			<SnippetTypes>
				<SnippetType>Expansion</SnippetType>
			</SnippetTypes>
		</Header>
		<Snippet>
			<Declarations>
				<Literal>
					<ID>type</ID>
					<ToolTip>Property type</ToolTip>
					<Default>int</Default>
				</Literal>
				<Literal>
					<ID>property</ID>
					<ToolTip>Property name</ToolTip>
					<Default>MyProperty</Default>
				</Literal>
				<Literal>
					<ID>field</ID>
					<ToolTip>Field name</ToolTip>
					<Default>_myField</Default>
				</Literal>
			</Declarations>
			<Code Language="csharp"><![CDATA[private $type$ $field$;

	public $type$ $property$
	{
		get 
		{ 
			return $field$;
		}
		set 
		{ 
			Set(() => $property$, ref $field$, value);
		}
	}
	$end$]]>
			</Code>
		</Snippet>
	</CodeSnippet>
</CodeSnippets>

So now we can type propb > Tab > Tab and get our template going!

And then of course for our RelayCommand:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<CodeSnippets  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2005/CodeSnippet">
	<CodeSnippet Format="1.0.0">
		<Header>
			<Title>rcmd</Title>
			<Shortcut>rcmd</Shortcut>
			<Description>Code snippet for an automatically implemented relay command
Language Version: C# 3.0 or higher</Description>
			<Author>Microsoft Corporation</Author>
			<SnippetTypes>
				<SnippetType>Expansion</SnippetType>
			</SnippetTypes>
		</Header>
		<Snippet>
			<Declarations>
				<Literal>
					<ID>property</ID>
					<ToolTip>Property name</ToolTip>
					<Default>MyProperty</Default>
				</Literal>
				<Literal>
					<ID>field</ID>
					<ToolTip>Field name</ToolTip>
					<Default>_myField</Default>
				</Literal>
			</Declarations>
			<Code Language="csharp"><![CDATA[private ICommand $field$;

	public ICommand $property$
	{
		get 
		{ 
			return $field$ ??
				($field$ = new RelayCommand(() => { $end$ }));
		}
	}
	]]>
			</Code>
		</Snippet>
	</CodeSnippet>
</CodeSnippets>

The shortcut for this is rcmd > Tab > Tab, and we have our neat little RelayCommand that even brings our cursor back to inside the RelayCommand where we can continue to write out our logic.

Now go out there and write less code faster!

If you like what you see, don’t forget to follow me on twitter @Suave_Pirate, check out my GitHub, and subscribe to my blog to learn more mobile developer tips and tricks!