In this post I just wanted to share some really good extensions for Visual Studio 2017 that I use on a daily basis.
File Nesting
A simple little utility that makes it possible to nest files from the UI, great for ie. web.config files with different versions for release, stage and production.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=MadsKristensen.FileNesting
https://github.com/madskristensen/FileNesting
Configuration Transform
This cool utility can test your configuration transform before commiting them, great to test your transforms very fast.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GolanAvraham.ConfigurationTransform
https://github.com/golavr/ConfigurationTransform
One issue with the current version of configuration transform (3.2) is that it only support configuration files thats placed in the root of project, i've created a pull request that solves this: https://github.com/golavr/ConfigurationTransform/pull/6, so if you nned to work with config files outside of the root - just download and build the version with my fix and place the files in your VS-extentions folder:
For Visual Studio 2017 the path is:
%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\{vs-version}\Extensions\
Markdown Editor
Provides a markdown editor inside Visual Studio, great when you want to edit your Github readme.md-files.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=MadsKristensen.MarkdownEditor
SQLite/SQL Server Compact Toolbox
This extension brings a lot of nice features and the one that I use the most is the ability to connect to a SQL Server Compact (SQLCE) or a .sdf database.
When I work with Umbraco CMS it's very nice to have this extention installed. I usally run Umbraco with SQL Server Express but the default option in the installer is SQLCE. So this extension to Visual Studio is very handing when building packages for Umbraco and to test out something.
Using this extension we can connect to, query and modify a SQLCE database inside of Visual Studio, after install we'll find a window under "View -> Windows" where we'll find all the goodness.
Download it here:
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ErikEJ.SQLServerCompactSQLiteToolbox
Mapping Generator
Nice little utility that can create automatic mappings for DTOs and Domain Models or View Models, I often use it to generate a starting point and then manually change the details for properties that need it.
Download it here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=54748ff9-45fc-43c2-8ec5-cf7912bc3b84.mappinggenerator