Creating and using an incremental source generator

I wanna create an incremental source generator for my web API project, but I cannot for the life of me understand how to create a source generator at all. I'm even having a hard time understanding the documentation that does exist. Is there anyone that's able to help?

I have a pretty clear idea of what I wanna do: I have a collection of HTTP endpoints in one class, which get turned into controllers, commands, and DTOs.

namespace Endpoints;

[GenerateHttpEndpoints] // better name ideas?
public partial class User
{
  [HttpPost("/api/users")]
  public async Task<ActionResult<Entities.User>> Create(
    string name,
    string email,
    string password)
  {
    // ...

    return Ok(createdUser);
  }
}

UserEndpoints.g.cs

file record CreateUserDto(
  string Name,
  string Email,
  string Password);

// other things related to handling the command

what are you actually trying to achieve with GenerateHttpEndpoints

generate controllers, commands, command handlers, dtos

From what

what do you mean from what? it's all laid out in the post

You already have a controller there

You can’t just generate something from nothing

How would it know what the DTO is supposed to even be?

Based on what?

from the method arguments...?

So who’s using the DTO then?

like

You’re going to need the DTO in the first place to post to an endpoint if you’re not getting these from query parameters

the Endpoints.User class is basically nothing. it's not used anywhere. it's not a controller. it only exists to generate the actual controller

What you’ve posted looks like a controller

and i'm saying it isn't one

So you’re going to write a class that looks like a controller, is supposed to be a controller but isn’t because you want to… source generate it

it's supposed to look like one so people reading the source have an idea of what's going on

but i simply cannot be bothered writing full controllers and services and commands and command handlers and dtos for every single thing i implement

But what you have is 90% a controller….

I don’t get it

If you don’t want to write any code, write a swagger doc and generate all controllers and types

look if you don't wanna help, you don't have to

that's fine

i don't think you're understanding what you want to do is backward

this is 99% a controller which you say you don't want to write

it's not anything. you can't post to an endpoint like that, can you? it doesn't take a DTO after all

right... so just change it to take a DTO and then inherit ControllerBase and put [ApiController] on the class

99%

and then i need a command. and a command handler. and maybe a service if i feel like it

like there's so much more that needs to be generated

i don't know what you're talking about

i dont know what a command or command handler is

i assume you mean mediatr

or something

that's a completely different topic and no you don't need that

i decided i want it

people building APIs only to have controllers => mediatr => handler => service end up building a lot of bloat

your desire to generate code comes from over engineering a solution

this is meant to be a completely feature rich, public api, everything open source, with potentially thousands of daily users

ok

where does mediatr come into play

you really make people wanna ask questions in this server you know

"potentially thousands of daily users"

you haven't got 1 yet

controller => service

what's wrong with that?