I write apps. Crudgeon generates code from code, with go-build-like syntax like //+property. It has saved me loads of time repeatedly and will continue to do so in the future, I imagine.

I thought that was a word when I first wrote it. But I was thinking about other words like curmudgeon or something. Anway...

CRUDGEON

A set of big projects came along in work that consisted of some of the same pieces, in a high level of thinking. Get data from a service, store it in a database, generate html based on the data. I guess it doesn't matter that HTML is generated. Generate formatted output based on the data. That's better.

The services are not consistent in their details. One was a WSDL Web Service, one is a JSON service, and two are just schemaless XML. This part was pretty annoying. Schemaless XML and JSON need to go away. We are in 2018, the dynamic typing experiment is over ;)  (that's sure to ruffle some feathers).

When looking over the data that was coming back, 2 responses returned types that have 130+ fields in them. This would have to be represented in a SQL Table, in stored procedures, in a C# class and interface. Looking over 130+ fields, I immediately thought there's no way I'm typing all of that by hand.

A really lazy person (like me) would probably try to use a text editor with regexp find/replace functionality, copy a list of the fields in and run regexp find/replace to format it in the way that I would need it at that given moment. Like, in a list of parameters to a stored procedure, or as a list of parameters to a constructor, or generating properties on a POCO (plain old C# object). I am definitely lazy, but I'm also too lazy to do that each time.

A championship caliber lazy person (like me) would probably write CRUDGEON.  I also don't know why I keep doing it in all caps. "crudgeon" is equally acceptable for those who's caps lock and shift key are just too far away.

So what is it?

Basically, you give it a fake C# list of properties, and it'll generate whatever you need it to. Right now it'll generate:

1. Database Table
2. Stored procedures for Get, Update, and Delete
3. C# objects with appropriate attributes for pulling data from services, like XML attributes, JSON "DataMember" and "DataContract" attributes, and so on.
4. A convenience "map" script which does the copy from a service object to your POCO, in the case of WSDL objects where you don't want to have the WSDL generated type available to everyone, and hence depended on by anything except what you control (I always do this by the way... never expose WSDL types, they should only be internal. But I digress).

The README.md has a lot of info on using crudgeon. It also has example inputs and outputs within the git repository itself. I wrote it for these specific projects in mind, and the generated C# code has references to things I wrote specifically for these projects, but if I come across any other project that needs to courier data and store it locally, I will definitely be broking open the ol' VS Code again. I wrote sqlrun in conjunction with crudgeon because I needed a quick way to run all those SQL files it was generating. I've used it hundreds of times in the week since. After testing, I'd find that I'd need a new attribute, or a column needs to allow null, or something. And I'd regenerate all of the code, run sqlrun at the SQL that was generated, and begin importing the code again, all withing like 10 seconds of each other.

Maybe you'll find some use for it. I know I definitely will. Like I said, it was definitely written with these sets of projects in mind, but with little modification, maybe they can be used more broadly. Or maybe with no modification! I'll know later when I find an excuse to use it again :)

Happy Coding!