The latest beta release of DesiGen is now released, containing the latest set of features and bugfixes. User feedback is most welcome.
This release has required a larger number of changes than expected, so whilst every effort has been taken to ensure that the updates have not caused any regressions, there is a chance that some code generation behaviours may have changed.
Details on how to install this version can be found on the installation page of the documentation.
New in this release:
Enhancement: Generated Word documents are now placed into the user's Temp folder as determined by the operating system, rather than into a hard-coded folder on the C: drive.
Feature: Users can now modify the coding standards applied during code generation. The 'Settings' section allows users to modify the default coding standard settings, as well as create new ones if there is more than one set of coding standards in use at the company. Programming languages for which settings can be specified are still limited to inbuilt ones at this time, as the way we will specify data type conversions for other languages hass not yet been resolved.
Feature: Small changes have been made to navigation menus, including moving the test page used for ad-hoc testing of artefact templates into the 'Templates' menu.
Bugfix: A bug in the data portal code of the CSLA ReadOnlyRoot template has been resolved.
Bugfix: CSLA templates now generate correct and complete code for objects that expose children.
Documentation: Some minor changes and enhancements have been made to the documentation on the website to improve readability and provide greater clarity on the subject being covered.
Known issues/limitations in this release:
The application will not run if installed inside of the "Program Files" or "Program Files (x86)" folders. This is a permissions problem that is out of my control. Please workaround this by installing it outside of these folders. The default location is C:\DotNotStandard\DesiGen.
Clicking on a link in the design menu causes unsaved changes made on the current page to be lost. This will be fixed when the application is upgraded to .NET 6; this will take place later in the year. The workaround is to click either the Next or Back button before navigating away from the design section.
There is no ability to create or edit your own templates yet; this is a high priority feature in the backlog.
There are a limited set of templates at the moment. We do not intend that we deliver all of the templates you will ever need; instead you will be able to create your own. However, there are a number of solution quickstarts that we do intend to add, such as a template for a hybrid MAUI solution.
The navigation between the design section and the rest of the application is still somewhat incomplete, such as how you close designs. We are currently seeking feedback on how navigation should be enabled. For the moment, you should either use the small 'X' in the top-right corner of the design section. Alternatively you can click on the application name at the top of the design menu to return to the main menu, although you risk losing changes if you use this approach.
There are still some limits to the ability to change settings at the moment. In the future it will be possible to modify more behaviours, but this currently remains on the backlog for prioritisation.
There is no functionality to assist with collaboration between team members, including design reviews. We will assess what extra work is required in this area as part of a future development phase. The workaround for the moment is to interact via other channels. If you wish to do offline collaboration, we suggest generating a Word document, which you could print and review by hand, or use the notation features in built into Word to enable collaboration upon it.
There is no status change functionality at this point in time; we are still deciding on what functionality is required as part of this feature. This will probably be tackled as part of the collaboration featureset.
There is no data management in place, such as the scheduled deletion or archiving of old designs.
Additional styling and UI tidy up is on the backlog for prioritisation.
All child CSLA objects are code generated to have async data access code. However, a limitation in CSLA currently makes async inserts and updates unreliable in some UI technologies, especially WPF applications built using Mobile Blazor Bindings. It is recommended that repository interfaces and classes are changed to use synchronous methods for Insert, Update and Delete if any application hands are encountered with generated code. This issue does not affect Fetch methods/operations, which can still benefit from async data access for maximum scalability.