Better way of using/generating item textures based on item name?

Hey all. Right now my mod has matching models/item/itemname.json, textures/item/itemname.json and itemname items. The data generators section of this tutorial suggests that there's a better and less error-prone way of doing it, but doesn't actually elaborate on this. Data generators don't seem to exist in documentation for 1.20.x. Any idea on better ways to do simple item textures with 1.20.x?