In the past I used to just hide Blogger’s navbar widget with some CSS code but it was still there being loaded in the HTML code. This approach is inefficient because I really don’t want the navbar. So why should it still be there in the code taking some precious time to load and impacting the user experience?

Figure 1 - Blogger navbar

In my case when I looked at the Layout section of my blog in Blogger dashboard I saw that the navbar section was locked (see the locked=’true’ in Figure 2) which means I could not delete it in the Layout screen. So there’s only one option to really get rid of it and it is through the widget code.

If you look carefully you’ll note that the navbar’s code loads some JavaScript files as the Google Plus One plusone.js file. This is impacting my page load speed because I’m already loading the plusone script somewhere else since I have a customized template. This leads to duplicate requests for the same JavaScript file. This is really really bad. There’s no need for it.

So I was after a way of removing the navbar forever; not just hiding it with CSS. I then found a way of doing it but it didn’t work for me. Blogger redesigned its interface and maybe this is the problem.

Then I just thought: what if I try to select the navbar section code and delete it and hit save on the HTML template – who knows… this can work out. What’s the result: it does work out.

How to do it? Follow these 10 simple steps…

1 - First save a backup copy of your blog template for the case where something goes wrong;

2 - Go to Blogger dashboard and select Template in the menu on the left;

3 - Hit the Backup / Restore button at the screen top right and save a backup copy of your layout;

4 - In the Template screen, click Edit HTML button;

5 - Click the checkbox Expand Widget Templates;

6 - Hit Ctrl + F and find the string ‘navbar’;

7 - Select the section code like the one shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 2 - Selecting the navbar section/widget code while editing the blog’s template HTML code

8 - Hit delete on the keyboard;

9 - Click the Save template button in orange. You should get this message:

Figure 3 - Warning message informing that deleting the navbar widget cannot be undone

10 - Click Delete widgets button and you’re done.

Now your page will load a bit faster and this is pretty nice for the user visiting your blog.

If you wanna be a T4 ninja, read all this: T4: Text Template Transformation Toolkit

Last Friday I was writing some code to populate a database with country/state information. I wrote the code to include Brazil and its 27 states but when I realized that I’d have to do the same thing again with USA and its states I thought that it’d be boring. US has 50 states and creating an object for each state would be a pain.

I have to populate the Name and Abbreviation properties of each State object. Each state is created this way in code:

new State()
    {
        Name = "Alabama",
        Abbreviation = "AL",
        Country = country2
    },

This sounded like a good a chance to try T4 Templates (Wikipedia article). T4 stands for Text Template Transformation Toolkit. That’s a beautiful name IMHO. I’ve read some articles about it since its inception but haven’t had a chance to try it. T4 can generate any text you want for whatever programming language.

T4 is used within Microsoft in ASP.NET MVC for the creation of the views and controllers, ADO.NET Entity Framework for entity generation, and ASP.NET Dynamic Data. Really powerful tool!

T4 came to my mind because I answered a question at StackOverflow 4 days ago: Is T4 template run every time it is requested? This proves that StackOverflow is a great tool to keep things fresh in your mind. The asker is creating e-mails with T4. I can imagine the creation of e-mail messages in a way that you pass a list of e-mail addresses an then for each e-mail address, T4 generates a .msg message. Just thinking..

So to start with T4 I created a simple Console Application as always and followed the steps described in this excellent MSDN step by step: Run-Time Text Generation by using Preprocessed T4 Text Templates.

To generate code to create each State object (50 in total) I created the following files within a Visual Studio Solution titled T4CodeGeneration:

Figure 1 - T4 Code Generation Project in Solution Explorer view

States’ information is stored within the USAStates.txt file that I got on the internet. This file have StateName, StateAbbreviation in each line. It’s a really basic CSV file…

Alabama,AL
Alaska,AK
Arizona,AZ
Arkansas,AR
California,CA
.
.
.

To read this simple .txt file I wrote this code (Program.cs):

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        States code = new States(ReadData());
        String result = code.TransformText();
        File.WriteAllText("outputCode.cs", result);
    }

    public static List<Tuple<string, string>> ReadData()
    {
        List<Tuple<string, string>> states = new List<Tuple<string, string>>();

        using (var myCsvFile =
                new TextFieldParser(@"C:\Users\Leniel\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\T4CodeGeneration\USAStates.txt"))
        {
            myCsvFile.TextFieldType = FieldType.Delimited;
            myCsvFile.SetDelimiters(",");

            while (!myCsvFile.EndOfData)
            {
                string[] fieldArray;

                try
                {
                    // Reading line data 
                    fieldArray = myCsvFile.ReadFields();
                }
                catch (MalformedLineException)
                {
                    // Not a valid delimited line - log, terminate, or ignore
                    continue;
                }

                // Process values in fieldArray
                states.Add(new Tuple<string, string>(fieldArray[0], fieldArray[1]));
            }
        }

        return states;
    }
}

I’m using the built in TextFieldParser class in the ReadData() method that’s part of the Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace. This class is used to read the CSV file. Take a look at the project’s references above. This class has everything one needs to read a simple text file.

I then read and add each line of the file to the states List<Tuple<string, string>>.

I use this states list within the T4 template to generate my custom code.

This is the content of the file (StatesCode.cs):

partial class States
{
    private readonly List<Tuple<string, string>> states;

    public States(List<Tuple<string, string>> states)
    {
        this.states = states;
    }
}

Interesting thing to note here is that it’s a partial class named States (this is the same name of the T4 template). During compilation this class code will be merged with the T4 accompanying States.cs file code (generated automatically by Visual Studio code generator). That’s why it’s a partial class… This class is used exclusively to pass data to the T4 template.

Now comes the really interesting part that lies within the States.tt file:

<#@ template language="C#" #>
var usaStates = new List<State>
{
<# foreach (Tuple<string, string> tuple in states) 
// states is declared in StatesCode.cs
{ #>
    new State()
    {
        Name = "<#= tuple.Item1 #>",
        Abbreviation = "<#= tuple.Item2 #>",
        Country = country2
    },
<# } // end of foreach #>
};

usaStates.ForEach(s => context.States.Add(s));

As you can see, the T4 template code has its own syntax and structures. C# code goes within <#  #> code blocks. To actually get a variable value you must place it within
<#=  #> code blocks. I’m using a foreach that traverses the states list. See that I’m accessing the Tuple<string, string> items (Item1 and Item2) within these code blocks.

Everything that lies outside <# #> is just static text and will be output as such in the generated result (code output). This is the case with the first two and last lines of T4 template code above.

Really important thing: check that you have set the T4 template CustomTool property appropriately to TextTemplatingFilePreprocessor as this is a critical part to make things work as expected:

Figure 2 - T4 Template and Custom Tool Property configuration

Now to end result: when I run the project, the Main method (part of Program.cs above) is called:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    States code = new States(ReadData());
    String result = code.TransformText();
    File.WriteAllText("outputCode.cs", result);
}

I read the data and pass it to the T4 template. I then call T4 TransformText() method that does the magic! Last but not least, the resulting code is written to a file called outputCode.cs.

I get a beautiful code that is placed in the Project’s Debug folder: C:\Users\Leniel\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\T4CodeGeneration\bin\Debug.

To accomplish my objective I just Copy/Paste this file code in my SampleData.cs class that I use in other project to seed my database.

As this is a pretty extensive code listing (that I’d have to type – oh my God!), I’ve chosen to let it for the final part of the post for your viewing pleasure. See that the code is well formatted. To get code formatted you have to fight with your T4 template file.

Now that you have a basic overview of T4 I hope you have fun with it as I had. This is power in your hands. Now it’s up to you to give wings to your imagination!

Visual Studio 2010 Console Application
http://sites.google.com/site/leniel/blog/T4CodeGeneration.zip

Code output:

var usaStates = new List<State>
{
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Alabama",
        Abbreviation = "AL",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Alaska",
        Abbreviation = "AK",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Arizona",
        Abbreviation = "AZ",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Arkansas",
        Abbreviation = "AR",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "California",
        Abbreviation = "CA",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Colorado",
        Abbreviation = "CO",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Connecticut",
        Abbreviation = "CT",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Delaware",
        Abbreviation = "DE",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Florida",
        Abbreviation = "FL",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Georgia",
        Abbreviation = "GA",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Hawaii",
        Abbreviation = "HI",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Idaho",
        Abbreviation = "ID",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Illinois",
        Abbreviation = "IL",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Indiana",
        Abbreviation = "IN",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Iowa",
        Abbreviation = "IA",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Kansas",
        Abbreviation = "KS",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Kentucky",
        Abbreviation = "KY",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Louisiana",
        Abbreviation = "LA",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Maine",
        Abbreviation = "ME",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Maryland",
        Abbreviation = "MD",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Massachusetts",
        Abbreviation = "MA",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Michigan",
        Abbreviation = "MI",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Minnesota",
        Abbreviation = "MN",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Mississippi",
        Abbreviation = "MS",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Missouri",
        Abbreviation = "MO",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Montana",
        Abbreviation = "MT",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Nebraska",
        Abbreviation = "NE",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Nevada",
        Abbreviation = "NV",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "New Hampshire",
        Abbreviation = "NH",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "New Jersey",
        Abbreviation = "NJ",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "New Mexico",
        Abbreviation = "NM",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "New York",
        Abbreviation = "NY",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "North Carolina",
        Abbreviation = "NC",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "North Dakota",
        Abbreviation = "ND",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Ohio",
        Abbreviation = "OH",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Oklahoma",
        Abbreviation = "OK",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Oregon",
        Abbreviation = "OR",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Pennsylvania",
        Abbreviation = "PA",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Rhode Island",
        Abbreviation = "RI",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "South Carolina",
        Abbreviation = "SC",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "South Dakota",
        Abbreviation = "SD",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Tennessee",
        Abbreviation = "TN",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Texas",
        Abbreviation = "TX",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Utah",
        Abbreviation = "UT",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Vermont",
        Abbreviation = "VT",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Virginia",
        Abbreviation = "VA",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Washington",
        Abbreviation = "WA",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "West Virginia",
        Abbreviation = "WV",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Wisconsin",
        Abbreviation = "WI",
        Country = country2
    },
    new State()
    {
        Name = "Wyoming",
        Abbreviation = "WY",
        Country = country2
    },
};

usaStates.ForEach(s => context.States.Add(s));