Visual Studio snippet for a view model property, using the SetProperty() method

I spent my 3 months summer internship coding a Windows 8 application, and even though there now is a basic implementation of the INotifyPropertyChanged interface provided by Microsoft (BindableBase), I can tell you creating a view model for each view you need is very time consuming and boring, and not nearly as quick as I would like it to be.

Of course, you have the prop and propfull snippets, which is a nice thing, but you still have to modify the setter yourself to use the SetProperty() method, which is a shame.

After a dozen view models, I got very bored, and went looking into creating a snippet…

Turns out it’s really easy!

I used the existing propfull snippet, modified it a bit, and voilà !

Here is the entire xml code for the snippet :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<CodeSnippets  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2005/CodeSnippet">
  <CodeSnippet Format="1.0.0">
    <Header>
      <Title>propnotif</Title>
      <Shortcut>propnotif</Shortcut>
      <Description>Code snippet for view model properties, using the SetProperty() method from BindableBase</Description>
      <Author>Melvyn Laily</Author>
      <SnippetTypes>
        <SnippetType>Expansion</SnippetType>
      </SnippetTypes>
    </Header>
    <Snippet>
      <Declarations>
        <Literal>
          <ID>type</ID>
          <ToolTip>Property type</ToolTip>
            <Default>int</Default>
        </Literal>
        <Literal>
          <ID>property</ID>
          <ToolTip>Property name</ToolTip>
            <Default>MyProperty</Default>
        </Literal>
      </Declarations>
      <Code Language="csharp">
<![CDATA[private $type$ _$property$;
  public $type$ $property$
  {
    get { return _$property$; }
    set { SetProperty(ref _$property$, value); }
  }
  $end$]]>
      </Code>
    </Snippet>
  </CodeSnippet>
</CodeSnippets>

and a download link if you prefer: propnotif.snippet.

You can import it in Visual Studio in Tools > Code Snippets Manager...