Fastest way to create a Converter in Visual Studio

Question

When working with Binding converters are pretty common.. I always find myself

• Right-click the correct Folder
• Click Add
• Click New Item
• (Sometimes) Choose Code to the left
• Choose Class and "Add" (and sometimes when I'm in a hurry a create an AboutBox instead :-( )
• Copy an old IValueConverter or IMultiValueConverter
• Change the namespace and the class name
• Remove the old code

and then I can finally start to implement my new converter.

After this I also have to add this namespace to the xaml file and add it to resources before I can reference it. I've been doing this a million times and this is probablly the slowest way to do it so my question is..

What is the fastest way to create a Converter in Visual Studio?

Answer 1

Keep all of your converter classes in a single file (ie: Converters.cs), then when you need to add one you can do the same copy/paste that you're already doing but you won't have to add a new item, re-namespace, add a new namespace, etc.

At least, that's what I do...

Answer 2

Probably the best resource for you is the Visual Studio templates. You can create your own and so you could right-click/create new item/Converter that would stub in everything that you're doing manually.

If you do create something like that, it would probably be a great little project to share with the community via codeplex or something like that.

Creating Item Templates in Visual Studio

Answer 3

You can certainly save time on this part:

• Copy an old IValueConverter or IMultiValueConverter
• Change the namespace and the class name
• Remove the old code

Do it this way instead:

• Create a new class (FooConverter for instance)
• Make it implement IValueConverter by just adding : IValueConverter
• With the caret still on IValueConverter, press Ctrl + . to open the smart tag menu
• Select "Implement interface IValueConverter" (should be the first option) from the smart tag menu

Visual Studio will automatically create the necessary method stubs, you just need to write the implementation.

Answer 4

I have added a Value Converter item template to the Visual Studio 2010: From the Project Context Menu, Add...New Item...Online Templates folder...Silverlight folder...Value Converter.