Hello,
So I found some methods that I was able to employ in my template development that would allow me to run the template code locally within Visual Studio (VS) directly. This sort of changes the game because it makes it possible to use the VS debugger to determine where the errors are, and also to step through the code and create breakpoints for variable inspections, etc...
The trick was getting the model object out of Tessitura. Once I figured that out, then it was just a matter of passing that to the MVC view in VS and letting it render.. With that I created a simple project in VS through which I can add my own templates and run them through the debugger there.
Anyhow, you can find the project here: https://bitbucket.org/TN_WebShare/template-debugger/src/master/ . I provided a somewhat verbose readme with the project code so hopefully you can get it working for you without a whole lot of VS or MVC knowledge.
I have tested it with the stock templates, as well as my own templates and they are all working without any problems..
Having these templates run locally within VS is a wonderful thing, and I think this will save a lot of folks a lot of time in their template development.
.... Please try it out and let me know if you are having trouble working with it, I would be happy to update the README with further instructions.
Loving your work Howard - I'll be looking into this soon - our templates are very ugly and need a lot work. Hoping to tackle this issue soon so I'll touch base when I do.
Well Thank you very much ;)
I am always eager to assist anyone that needs help with programming or SQL or anything.. Feel free to get in touch with me whenever you need to...