For those of us that implement INotifyPropertyChanged on our state objects, the new Automatic Properties feature of Visual Studio 2008 hasn't been very useful. In fact, the snippet prop that used to create a private variable and associated public property has now been replaced by an Automatic Property.
Thanks to a comment by SnYnE on this blog post, there is an easy way to get the functionality back.
Simply create a new text file at:
C:\users\*your user name*\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Code Snippets\Visual C#\My Code Snippets
Call it "propc.snippet"
Populate the contents with:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<CodeSnippets xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2005/CodeSnippet">
<CodeSnippet Format="1.0.0">
<Header>
<Title>prop</Title>
<Shortcut>propc</Shortcut>
<Description>Code snippet for property and backing field</Description>
<Author>Microsoft Corporation</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>
<Literal>
<ID>field</ID>
<ToolTip>The variable backing this property</ToolTip>
<Default>myVar</Default>
</Literal>
</Declarations>
<Code Language="csharp"><![CDATA[private $type$ $field$;
public $type$ $property$
{
get { return $field$;}
set { $field$ = value;}
}
$end$]]>
</Code>
</Snippet>
</CodeSnippet>
</CodeSnippets>
Now when you type "propc" in Visual Studio, you will get the property constructor that you are used to.