I am taking over an ASP.NET Web Application using C# and all the code (including C# source) was given to me without the solution file (something.sln) so whenever opening the Web Application in Visual Studio 2017 I have to open by "Folder..." instead of by "Project/Solution...". Once open, I am able to make the necessary changes to the code behind files such as Default.aspx.cs or somethingElse.aspx.cs, but when I try to test the code changes by going to Run > Start Without Debugging, I couldn't find the Run menu option; I see the Build Solution button but it's disabled (greyed out).
Every time I try navigating directly to my site at http://dev.mydomain.com. The code changes I made did not get compiled neither.
So how do I get the Run or Build menu option enabled?
The easiest way to correct this issue is probably to create a new, empty ASP.NET WebForms project (and a new solution file as well if necessary) and copy your code files into it. You can then tell Visual Studio to "include" those files in the project.
You may (or may not) need to make the odd other minor adjustment too but those basic steps should get you started.
Not sure if this is related, but adding the sln file to the git ignore removed its visibility from VisualStudio. I had to open the project csproj file in VisualStudio.
THen on close, the prompt was asking me to save a new SLN file with the same solution name i was looking for. I was then able to go to the directory with the original solution in it, and then I was able to open it again in Visual Studio.
For all those who come to this post in the future, I would check your gitignore files and see if they ignored the sln file.
Related
I am developing a piece of an existing web site and am having numerous issues trying to upload my files to the server. Everything runs fine locally, but once I put my files on the server things start breaking.
Right now I have a page that gets this error
"Parser Error Message: Could not load type '[Namespace].[PageName]'
. If I take out the inherits statement, it works. The namespace and the pagename are declared in the code behind, which is referenced in the page header.
I also just noticed that all of the pages that predate me don't have code behinds.
There are two options for putting a file on a web server.
One option is to compile it and use a "Publish" feature, in which all of your code-behind files are NOT on the server, and are instead are compiled down to the .dll.
Another is to not compile the site, and simply copy all the aspx ans .cs (or .vb) files out there, uncompiled.
Actually there are three, but I think you only need to deal with these two right now. They are described further at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178466(v=vs.100).aspx under the "Flexible Deployment" section.
Your predecessor apparently used the first method. The only way to fix this is to get the compiled .dll files out of the \bin directory, and decompile them using a tool like Reflector or Teleriks's Just Decompile. (The latter is free, the former has a free for a limited time trial period.)
Alternatively, if you can get the full source code, you can simply remove all the content already out ther and publish it using the non-compiled method. Of course, there will be down time, and you'll need to test pretty carefully...
When you have a codebehind file, it needs to get compiled into a DLL, and that DLL needs to be in the bin directory of the webserver. It doesn't actually work fine without the Inherits - nothing from your codebehind would be in there - it may only display ok initially, but none of the events would fire.
If the rest of the site is all done with the code included in the .aspx pages, then those pages are all standalone. But if you want to use codebehinds, then you'll need to publish the DLL.
Test easiest way to get your code up and running would be publishing the code. Inside of your project in Visual Studio right click on your application and click on publish then for the location you can just create a folder on your local system and select only files needed to run this application then select publish. It will only copy the files needed to run the application and you can copy those files to your server and everything should be correct. I will also copy your web.config/app.config file so make sure that everything is correct in that file or delete that file from the directory once the publish is done.
So I eventually talked to the lead developer for the other group that works on the site. He explained that they do a Solution Rebuild then just move any changed as*x files and the /bin .dll. For some reason, my subversion client didn't actually update anything when I asked it to update, so my branch didn't have some new controls the other group made. When I would build my solution it didn't include the .dlls for the new controls, so when I uploaded my dll the new controls weren't defined and I got the same message. When I took the new dll down, my controls weren't defined.
Anyway, I fixed that. Thanks for the answers.
i have 4 project in my solution, framework , domain objects,business objects and website ...
but this morning website project couldnt be loaded... when i tried firsttime to open solution... "The solution file has been modified outside the enviroment" message seemed and press reload then error is project file is corrupted... how can it happen... how can i fix this...
thx..
One way... if its from some source control , get the latest and leave the changed part by you.
If you dont have any source control then you can have the two options
- Create a new solution and add all your projects to it and rebuild it. Check for the errors.
- If your code is completely corrupted and files are unreadable, that is unrecoverable,
then you must have to follow this
copy the projects dlls out of bin
dir,
use red gate reflector and extract
all the class file in new project
file.
Now for aspx.cs you can create a new
project add all aspx file in that new project and also the
new cs files generated by the reflector addin. Do it for all pages. When done , right click on Project of web app(if its), then choose convert to web application. Also check the Page header of each page that they are using the same class files.
I know this is little bit tough , but will work....to recover almost that much code, when your app was last compiled.
Note : Also you will have to maintain the hierarchy of the project as the reflector add in (FileGenerator on Codeplex) might miss the actual project hierarchy.
You can open your solution file (.sln) in notepad and check for the consistency of the document.
The sln file will be in a hierarchical structure (like we have an xml).
You can also open csproj files of different projects that you have in the solution check the xml of the csproj.
I have a web app that has an app_offline.htm file, this file is stored in source control along with everything else.
The problem I have is that each time I (or any other developer) do a get latest on the source I get the app_offline.htm file and then when I try to run the app all I see is the app_offline rather than the actual web site.
Is there way that I can stop this from happening?
You can right click on the file and choose exclude from project. It renames the file so you IIS won't pick it up, but I'm pretty sure that Visual Studio will not remember that after you do a new checkout. (Can't verify this though)
Other than renaming it or removing it locally, it most certainly depends on your source control system. The whole point of source control is to "restore" a code source to a specific point. Checking out something other than the current state is kind of against the source controls principle..
Can you perhaps rename the file in source control and when you publish it you rename it to app_offline.htm then instead?
Using a Visual Studio 2010 ASP.net web application, I have several projects that share some JavaScript/css files. The most logical way for them to share these files is to place the files in a single folder and each project has them included with the "Add as Link" option. However, if I add the files this way when I'm debugging using either the Visual Studio Development server or debugging using a local IIS web server all requests for these files return 404 Not Found errors. If I publish the site then the files are copied but that obviously doesn't help with debugging.
Is there something I'm missing or is this a failing on VS's part?
To overcome this problem some time ago I created a 'MSBuild.WebApplication.CopyContentLinkedFiles' nuget package. This package adds MsBuild target which copies all content files added as link to project folder during build.
Note: if you use source control then it is better to add copied files (from Web Application folder) to ignore list.
I wouldn't really call that a failing, since you asked for that behavior in the first place: linked items in Visual Studio projects are actual links to external files. Those files can reside anywhere on the disk and are not copied into the project folder.
You might want to copy those files locally yourself during a pre-build event. That way, the files will remain synchronized and you won't duplicate them until your first compile.
The problem seems to be that the website runs right from your source folders, rather than from the bin folder. This means that the file will be missing, whether or not it is copied to the output folder.
It's probable that running from a local or remote web server would not have this problem, though I didn't get that working, and I'd rather not add IIS to my local machine if I don't have to.
Adding a pre-build copy command did work. Note that the current directory will be the bin folder. (You can use cd to echo the current directory to the build window if you want to see it):
If the file is in another solution, your command will look something like (three ..s: one to get out of each of bin, project, and solution folders):
copy ..\..\..\OtherSolution\OtherProject\Scripts\MyJSFile.js ..\Scripts\
If it's in the same solution, but a different project:
copy ..\..\OtherProject\Scripts\MyJSFile.js ..\Scripts
One minor issue is that the link to the file will collide with the new copy of the file, even if you don't add it to your project. As long as you make the link first, it seems to work. If you copied the file first, you'll have to manually delete the copy, and then refresh the solution explorer before before being able to add the link.
Select the link in Solution Explorer and then look at properties window and set Copy To Output Directory to Copy Always. Linked items are set to Do Not Copy by default.
BTW, you can copy many files as links very easily directly from Solution Explorer when using VSCommands 2010 extension.
See this blog post about a simple addition to your project file.
http://mattperdeck.com/post/Copying-linked-content-files-at-each-build-using-MSBuild.aspx
I'm a .NET newb, so forgive me if this is a stupid question. I've inherited a website which I've amended and now need to rebuild. I've opened the .sln file in VS2008, made my changes to the files and clicked 'build > rebuild website'. This seems to run okay - it outputs a load of comments in a panel at the bottom as it's building, and then finally stops, saying: "Validation complete. Rebuild All: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped".
But when I check the bin folder, there are no dlls in there.
Does anyone know what's going wrong here? I just need to build this thing and upload the aspx and dll files and it should be sorted, but just can't seem to get it to build properly at all.
Thanks for any pointers...
If its a web project and not a web application then Visual Studio does not actually build and compile it. It just checks through for errors and let's the runtime itself compile the web pages and code behind. So you won't get a dll in the bin folder.
You can try pre-compiling your site and copying the output up to your web server.
Cheers Tigger.
Make sure you're looking in the right bin folder. It's not the one in solution explorer, and you need to make sure you're checking using the "Release" configuration bin folder and not "Debug".
It's entirely possible they are redirecting the build output to somewhere else.
Check the project properties (right click on the project name and select Properties).
On the "Compile" tab look to see what the Build Output Path is. That is where the assemblies (dll's) are going to be pushed to.
Try Click on Solution right mouse ant choose Build solution. It rebuild all your solution files not only the web page.
Go to the 'Build' menu at the top of Visual Studio and select 'Build Solution'.