Visual Studio 2019 Tricks and Techniques: A developer’s guide to writing better code and maximizing productivity

Length: 386 pages
Edition: 1
Language: English
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Publication Date: 2021-01-15
ISBN-10: 1800203527
ISBN-13: 9781800203525
Sales Rank: #2119026 (See Top 100 Books)

Harness the full power of the Visual Studio IDE to take your coding skills to the next level by learning about IDE productivity practices and exclusive techniques

Key Features

Increase your productivity by leveraging Visual Studio 2019’s improvements and features
Explore powerful editing, code intelligence, and source code control features to increase productivity
Delve into VS’s powerful, untapped features such as custom project templates and extensions

Book Description

Visual Studio 2019 (VS 2019) and Visual Studio Code (VS Code) are powerful professional development tools that help you to develop applications for any platform with ease. Whether you want to create web, mobile, or desktop applications, Microsoft Visual Studio is your one-stop solution. This book demonstrates some of the most sophisticated capabilities of the tooling and shows you how to use the integrated development environment (IDE) more efficiently to be more productive.

You’ll begin by gradually building on concepts, starting with the basics. The introductory chapters cover shortcuts, snippets, and numerous optimization tricks, along with debugging techniques, source control integration, and other important IDE features that will help you make your time more productive. With that groundwork in place, more advanced concepts such as the inner workings of project and item templates are covered. You will also learn how to write quality, secure code more efficiently as well as discover how certain Visual Studio features work ‘under the hood’.

By the end of this Visual Studio book, you’ll have learned how to write more secure code faster than ever using your knowledge of the extensions and processes that make developing successful solutions more enjoyable and repeatable.

What you will learn

Understand the similarities and differences between VS 2019 and VS Code
Get to grips with numerous keyboard shortcuts to improve efficiency
Discover IDE tips and tricks that make it easier to write code
Experiment with code snippets that make it easier to write repeating code patterns
Find out how to customize project and item templates with the help of hands-on exercises
Use Visual Studio extensions for ease and improved productivity
Delve into Visual Studio’s behind the scene operations

Who this book is for

This book is for C# and .NET developers who want to become more efficient and take advantage of features they may not be aware of in the IDE. Those looking to increase their productivity and write quality code more quickly by fully utilizing the power of the Visual Studio IDE will also find this book useful.

Flavors of Visual Studio
Keyboard Shortcuts
IDE Tips and Tricks
Working with a Repository
Working with Snippets
Database Explorers
Compiling, Debugging, and Version Control
Introduction to Project and Item Templates
Creating Your Own Template
Deploying Custom Templates
Overviewing VS 2019 Extensions
Overviewing VS Code Extensions
CodeMaid is Your Friend
Be Your Team’s Hero with CodeGenHero
Secure Code with Puma Scan
Appendix – Other Popular Productivity Extensions

Visual Studio 2019 Tricks and Techniques
Why subscribe?
Foreword
Contributors
About the authors
About the reviewers
Packt is searching for authors like you
Preface
    Who this book is for
    What this book covers
    To get the most out of this book
    Download the example code files
    Code in Action
    Download the color images
    Conventions used
    Get in touch
    Reviews
Section 1: Visual Studio IDE Productivity Essentials
Chapter 1: Flavors of Visual Studio
    Technical requirements
    Quick reference cheat sheet
    Visual Studio 2019 (Windows)
        Features of VS 2019 Enterprise edition
    Visual Studio 2019 for Mac
    GitHub Codespaces
    Summary
Chapter 2: Keyboard Shortcuts
    Technical requirements
    Windows shortcuts
        Shortcuts that work in both Windows and Visual Studio
        Intermediate-level shortcuts
    Keyboard mapping schemes
        Choosing a keyboard mapping scheme
    Customizing your own keyboard mapping schemes
        Creating an individual shortcut
        Viewing existing shortcuts
        Importing an entire keyboard mapping scheme
    Learning keyboard shortcuts
        Installing the Learn the Shortcut extension
        Default Learn the Shortcut behavior
    Justification for investing time
    Summary
    Further reading
Chapter 3: IDE Tips and Tricks
    Technical requirements
    Having fun with the file tabs
        Pinning documents
        Vertical documents
        Horizontal and vertical groups
    Traversing your solution
        Navigating through active windows or tabs
        Using Quick Launch
        Track Active Item
    Live sharing
    Preview Features
    Faster editing
        Column Mode
        Multi-caret selects
        Toolbox
    Cleaner code
        Code Formatting
        Code Cleanup
    Summary
Chapter 4: Working with a Repository
    Technical requirements
    Automating Git commands
        Git commands quick reference
    Working with source control
    Creating a repository
        For Windows
        For VS Code
        For Mac
    Cloning a repository
        For Windows
        For VS Code
        For Mac
    Getting updates (Fetch and Pull)
        For Windows
        For VS Code
        For Mac
    Adding files
        For Windows
        For VS Code
        For Mac
    Creating a .gitignore file
    Committing (and pushing) your code
        For Windows
        For VS Code
        For Mac
    Stashing (and applying) your code
    Understanding branch and merge
        Creating a branch
    Working with pull requests
    Summary
Chapter 5: Working with Snippets
    Technical requirements
    Snippet basics
    Inserting snippets
    Code Snippets Manager dialog
        Examining a custom snippet's XML definition
    Deploying snippets
        Importing a custom snippet
    Summary
    Further reading
Chapter 6: Database Explorers
    Technical requirements
    Managing databases in Visual Studio 2019 for Windows
        Working with SQL Server Object Explorer
    Interacting with databases in VS Code
        Getting connected
        Creating our database
        Expanding the database
    Summary
Chapter 7: Compiling, Debugging, and Versioning
    Technical requirements
        Installing Docker
    Exploring compilation flags and options
        Visual Studio 2019 for Windows
        Visual Studio Code
        Visual Studio 2019 for Mac
        Conditional compilation
        Regions
        Pre-build and post-build events
    Investigating advanced debugging
        Breakpoints
        The Immediate window
        Who's watching?
        Remote debugging
        Remote debugging Docker in Visual Studio 2019 for Windows
        What about remote debugging in VS Code?
        Visual Studio 2019 for Mac, too!
    Discovering versioning
        Versioning in traditional full framework .NET projects
        Versioning in .NET Core
    Summary
Section 2: Customizing Project Templates and Beyond
Chapter 8: Introduction to Project and Item Templates
    Technical requirements
    Understanding item templates
    Knowing when to use project templates
        Template tags
        When to use templates
    Looking at a sample scenario
        Running the project
        Examining the project
    Valuing templates
    Summary
    Further reading
Chapter 9: Creating Your Own Templates
    Technical requirements
    Exporting a custom project template
        Using the exported project template
    Identifying issues with the project template
    Fixing problems in the template definition
        Understanding template parameters
    Reimporting the fixed template
    Exporting project items
    Summary
Chapter 10: Deploying Custom Templates
    Technical requirements
        Installing the Visual Studio SDK component
    Introducing the client-server project
        Client-server sample code
    Creating the VSIX deployment package 
        Reviewing the deployment project
        Examining the template project
        Making template wizards
    Using the VSIX deployment package 
        Testing the project template
    Publishing to the Visual Studio Marketplace
    Distributing instructions for the Dotnet Core CLI 
    Summary
Section 3: Leveraging Extensions for the Win
Chapter 11: Overviewing Visual Studio 2019 Extensions
    Technical requirements
    What are extensions?
    Visual Studio Marketplace
    Creating extensions
        Creating extensions in Visual Studio 2019 for Windows
        Creating extensions in Visual Studio 2019 for Mac
    Roslyn analyzers
    Summary
Chapter 12: Overviewing VS Code Extensions
    Technical requirements
    What are VS Code extensions?
    VS Code in the Visual Studio Marketplace
        Creating an extension
        Generating a basic extension
        Making our extension work for us!
    Publishing your extension
    Summary
Chapter 13: CodeMaid is Your Friend
    Technical requirements
    A brief history of CodeMaid
        Configuring CodeMaid
        Reorganizing to reduce merge conflicts
        User profile and solution settings
    Learning about cleanup actions
        The narrowing gap
    Exploring CodeMaid Spade
        McCabe Cyclomatic Complexity
    Build Progress
    Summary
Chapter 14: Be Your Team's Hero with CodeGenHero
    Technical requirements
    Understanding the core concepts of code generation
        Metadata and templates
    Introducing CodeGenHero™
        Installing CodeGenHero™
        Example project overview
        Scaffolding a solution – .NET Core CLI
    The CodeGenHero™ solution
        Creating a metadata source
        Configuring a blueprint
        Choosing templates
        Configuring template parameters
        Mapping target projects
        Integrating generated code
    Handling change with CodeGenHero™
        How does it work?
        Changing the database schema
        Merging changes
    Summary
Chapter 15: Secure Code with Puma Scan
    Technical requirements
    Understanding common application security vulnerabilities
        A1:2017-Injection
        A6:2017-Security Misconfiguration
        A7:2017-Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
        A9:2017-Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities
        A10:2017-Insufficient Logging and Monitoring
    Finding vulnerabilities for fun and profit
    Automating vulnerability detection with Puma Scan
        Installing Puma Scan in Visual Studio 2019
        Installing Puma Scan in VS Code
        Running Puma Scan and viewing the results
    Extending Puma Scan with custom sinks
    Using Puma Scan in a DevSecOps pipeline 
    Summary
Appendix 
    Other Popular Productivity Extensions
    Presenting some great Visual Studio 2019 for Windows extensions
        Conveyor by Keyoti
        Ozcode – Magical C# debugging
        Open Command Line
        ReSharper 
        Visual Studio Spell Checker
    Sharing our favorite Visual Studio Code extensions
        Increment selection
        CamelCase
        C# extensions
        The vscode-icons and vscode-icons-mac extensions
        Beautify
        The vscode-spotify extension
    Choosing useful Visual Studio 2019 for Mac extensions
        LiveXAML for Xamarin.Forms
        MFractor
        NuGet package management extensions
        MvvmCross Template Pack
    Summary
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