Just a few weeks ago, I ran into an issue with TDS where all the “Image” fields in my solution were not generated correctly by TDS during code generation. Hence, I had hundreds of “Image” fields that had no reference.

If you are not familiar with using TDS for code generation with Glass.Mapper, I would highly recommend you take a look here, as it truly is a phenomenal tool for rapid development by generating models from Sitecore items:

http://www.glass.lu/Mapper/Sc/Tutorials/Tutorial24

I was stumped as to why this might have happened. After taking a look around my Sitecore instance, and getting some tips from the Sitecore Community on Slack in room “TDS”, I was able to find out what the problem was. I had an “ImageBase” base template that was originally setup on a template. However, I inadvertently created another Image field on the template itself with the same field title. Hence, when it came time to code generate, TDS threw up an error, but then couldn’t come back from the code generation “Image” fields issue. Basically, I had hundreds of mis-referenced “Image” fields in my code generated models file.

After speaking with Kamruz Jaman, he gave me a pointer to possibly just explicitly reference the Image object. Great Idea right!? So my solution to this issue was by going into my glassv3item.tt file and searching for Image. Once I found it, I changed it from:

case "image":
    return "Image";
 
case "general link":
case "general link with search":
    return "Link";

to

case "image":
    return "Glass.Mapper.Sc.Fields.Image";

case "general link":
case "general link with search":
    return "Glass.Mapper.Sc.Fields.Link";

I did this for both the Image and Link so if me or my development team ever ran into this issue of double creating a field with the same name, working with bases and the template item, that TDS code generation would not break on the referencing of Image and Link fields. Hence, I consider it a best practice to explicitly reference those fields just for safe measure in all your projects with TDS & Glass.Mapper code generation. Happy coding!