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Dash is a .NET command-line tool for fast model-driven code generation.

How Dash Works

• As a Developer, you will be writing a Model File using JSON to describe Domain Entities and its relationship with eachother.
• Dash has several generic Built-in Templates to generate code based on your Model File.
• You can also write Custom Templates to generate code to cover more specific use cases.
• Run the Dash CLI tool to generate the code.

Here is a visual representation of the above:

Installation

Installation is pretty simple, just copy and paste the following command:

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-dash --version 0.6.1-alpha

If you have successfully installed Dash, the following command will bring up the help screen:

dotnet dash --help

Update

Updating to the latest, or different, version of Dash is equally simple:

dotnet tool update --global dotnet-dash --version 0.6.1-alpha

Hello World example

To generate code, you need to write a Model File.

Consider the following helloworld.json Model File, where we define one Entity Account with two Attributes:

{
    "Model": {
        "Account": {
            "Username": "String",
            "PasswordHash": "String"
        }
    }
}

To generate code for your .csproj, you simply run the following CLI command:

dotnet dash --file helloworld.json

If you have added a .editorconfig file to your poject, the generated code will be formatted accordingly.

The result is the following POCO class:

public class Account
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Username { get; set; }
    public string PasswordHash { get; set; }
}

As you can see, even though the Id attribute was not explicitly declared, Dash will implicitly add the attribute to the Model.

EF Context class:

public class HelloWorldDbContext : DbContext
{
    public ICollection<Account> Accounts { get; set; }
}