Ok, I think I have an idea to solve my own question.

But it raises a new question.

The simplest way would be to query the ContentTypeService and parse all properties on the found contentTypes. However I would want to try and create a T4 file with all my aliases printed. How can I use create an ApplicationContext in a T4 file snippet?

Or if that's not possible, how would one do this inside a console application?

You shouldn't need the `ApplicationContext`, if you're running outside of the Umbraco WebApp (which T4 would be).

My deployment tool Chauffeur just uses the services directly - https://github.com/aaronpowell/Chauffeur/blob/master/Chauffeur/Deliverables/ContentTypeDeliverable.cs#L30

To get the interface you can just create a new instance of the `ContentTypeService` class as well as new-ing up all of the dependencies which it takes into itself. But be aware that if you're doing this without the Umbraco WebApp things get nasty quickly as a internally Umbraco services use a mix of constructor-provided dependencies and `ApplicationContext` provided dependencies. In the narrow use-case of getting content types + their aliases you _should_ be fine to not setup `ApplicationContext`. You'll probably need to ensure your connection string is in the `*.config` used by the console application as Umbraco expects it to exist (and I had problems injecting it), as for T4 I have no idea how you create a "`*.config`" file.

Chauffeur now uses an IoC container to resolve dependencies so I don't really know what the dependency chain is any more, but looking at the earlier implementation (pre-IoC) you'll find https://github.com/aaronpowell/Chauffeur/blob/fbdc2c897bc3264a5f849f6ed74ba8ae8721f77f/Chauffeur/Deliverables/ContentTypeDeliverable.cs#L152-L216 which just bootstraps all the services itself.

Thanks for the quick response. The config files are a pain indeed, getting errors like

Could not load the Umbraco.Core.Configuration.UmbracoSettings.IUmbracoSettingsSection from config file, ensure the web.config and umbracoSettings.config files are formatted correctly at Umbraco.Core.Configuration.UmbracoConfig.UmbracoSettings()

Which makes sense though. Maybe I should just create an ApiController that fills in the template at runtime.

Do you have the full stack-trace? I hit the problem with not being able to load the settings section but in the end I didn't need to use it be skipping around the dependencies.

Hey, you could always just write a Chauffeur Deliverable to do it ;)

Hmm, this should actually already work with the existing Deliverables I think.

umbraco> content-type get <id or alias> gives everything back that I need, so it's matter of string parsing then.

I'll try it out some time and let you know how it goes.

What am I missing here?

    public string Rock()
    {
        string chauffeurExe = HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/bin/Chauffeur.Runner.exe");
        Process compiler = new Process();
        compiler.StartInfo.FileName = chauffeurExe;
        compiler.StartInfo.Arguments = "ct get-all";
        compiler.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
        compiler.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
        compiler.Start();
        string output = compiler.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();
        compiler.WaitForExit();
        return output;
    }`

Probably, no idea what it'd be though, Chauffeur isn't designed to be used like that so I've got no idea how it would react.

is working on a reply...