Programmatical API

If the Command Line Interface doesn’t meet your requirements, or you just want to generate TypeScript files from the code level, you can use the programmatical API located in TypeGen.Core assembly.

The Generator class

After installing TypeGen as a NuGet package, you’ll have access to the Generator (TypeGen.Core.Generator) class, which is responsible for generating TypeScript files. This class is also used by TypeGen CLI.

Generator.Generate()

To generate TypeScript files, the Generate() method is used. All its overloads except for Generate(GenerationSpec) generate TypeScript files based on the used attributes (from the TypeGen.Core.TypeAnnotations namespace). The Generate(GenerationSpec) takes all information from the generation spec and ignores any attributes by default.

Events

There is currently one event in the Generator class you can subscribe to - the Generator.FileContentGenerated event. This event fires whenever a TypeScript file content is generated. The event handler for this event takes an argument of type TypeGen.Core.FileContentGeneratedArgs, which contains the following properties (event data):

• Type : Type - the type for which the file was generated (can be null if the file has not been generated based on a type)
• FilePath : string - the generated file’s path
• FileContent : string - the generated file content

The default handler for this event saves the generated file content to the file system. There is a possibility to unsubscribe the default event handler (by using the Generator.UnsubscribeDefaultFileContentGeneratedHandler() method), which will cause the generated file content to not be saved in the file system. You can also re-subscribe the default handler by using the Generator.SubscribeDefaultFileContentGeneratedHandler() method.

Logging

The Generator class logs messages using the Generator.Logger instance. You can either provide your custom implementation of the TypeGen.Core.Business.ILogger interface, or you can use the built-in TypeGen.Core.Business.ConsoleLogger for logging purposes. Generator.Logger is null by default, or you can also set it to null - in this case, no messages will be logged.

Generator options

The Generator class also has a public property named Options, which holds the file generation options. The options can be assigned by setting the Generator.Options property to an instance of GeneratorOptions class, or by modifying the existing Generator.Options instance.

The current list of options available in GeneratorOptions is provided in API Reference | GeneratorOptions.

Example

An example of programmatical usage is shown below:

var options = new GeneratorOptions { BaseOutputDirectory = @"C:\my\output" }; // create the options object
var generator = new Generator { Options = options }; // create the generator instance
var assembly = Assembly.GetCallingAssembly(); // get the assembly to generate files for
generator.Generate(assembly); // generates the files