I'm trying to build a redistributable assembly containing several custom controls (CommonControls).
My environment: MSVC 2010, ASP.NET (WebForms) .NET 2.0/3.0/3.5
The problem: Compiling everything with a Web Deployment Project won't work if I localize CommonControls via App_GlobalResources.
Here is how I build the CommonControls assembly:
I use a WebSite containing the .ascx and .ascx.cs files:
and a Web Deployment Project with the following settings:
This will create "CommonControls.dll".
That assembly is to be used in a different ASP.NET WebApplication as follows:
web.config:
First (minor) problem: Adding CommonControls as a dependency will not automatically copy the satellite assemblies for the languages. Copying them manually to the correct output path seems to work though (for DEBUGGING).
Main problem: The Main web application is also localized via App_GlobalResources and built with a Web Deployment Project:
That build process will fail with
ASPNETCOMPILER : error ASPRUNTIME: Object reference not set to an
instance of an object.
Both deployment projects create a file named "bin\App_GlobalResources.compiled" and I guess those 2 files cannot coexist peacefully within the same output-project.
Is there any elegant solution to localize both CommonContols AND Main using ASP.NET built-in localization?
Note: The project I'm working on has to be compatible with Apache+Mono, so my project-settings (screenshots above) must be exactly like this to work correctly (already tested all other variations).
I fixed it. It was (probably) caused by outdated assemblies in the Bin folder used by the WDP (seems to be a good idea to manually clean that folder from time to time).
I also copied files from "CommonControls\Bin" to the final output (via pre-build event) which is not necessary and causes everything to break (satellite assemblies for translations are automatically copied by MSVC).
While my problem+solution might not be that helpful to others, it's at least a tutorial how to build a re-distributable assembly with some custom-controls out of a bunch of user-controls.
Notes:
All outputs of the custom-control assembly must be merged. Otherwise we will end up with 2 "App_GlobalResources.dll" files (won't work)
It only works with a "Web-site project", not "Web application"
User-controls must use the "CodeFile/Inherit" tags, not the deprecated "CodeBehind" tag (get rid of all those ".designer.cs" files!)
User-controls must have a "ClassName" tag that differs from the control's name (I appended "Internal" and renamed the class(es) in code-behind)
Embedded resources (images, scripts...) are not directly supported in a "Web-site project". I use an additional LIB for that
I have an ASP.NET web application written in C# 4.0. The application references a class library that comes with its own configuration file. At runtime, the class library uses similar to the following code to load this specific configuration:
var exeConfigPath = this.GetType().Assembly.Location;
var config = ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(exeConfigPath);
This is done because the library has to load its bundled configuration rather than the application configuration. The application configuration should not be concerned of the library's settings and should not be able to alter them.
Now, there are a few other things that need to be done for this concept to work. I have to set the library's configuration file build operation as Content in the properties window and the Copy to be Copy Always or Copy If Newer. So far so good - the file gets automatically both into the class library's bin directory, and the web applications's bin directory, and is correctly renamed from App.config to CustomLibrary.dll.config (as supposed, the library's dll is CustomLibrary.dll).
Now I am facing two issues.
1) When I publish the web application to a filesystem location (mapped in IIS), the CustomLibrary.dll.config appears back as App.config in the bin folder of the published app. OK - I will rename it in the class library project to match the expected convention - and problem solved.
2) Even when published, the IIS compiles the application again and stores it in the ASP.NET Temporary Files. There is a fancy directory structure with a folder dedicated for each assembly referenced. The folder corresponding to the CustomLibrary.dll does not contain the config file in it. Since this.GetType().Assembly.Location will return the path to the temp folder, the application fails to load the configuration and crashes as it should.
I need to preserve the pattern of having the configuration in the class library, and be able to make it work in the web application. When manually copying the .config to the temp folder, the app works, but see, I really hate manual copying to randomly-named folders.
Is there a way to either prevent IIS from using the temp folders, or to make it copy along the config files? I believe the problem I am facing is configuration-related rather than conceptual since the application works as expected when the config file is in place. I'd prefer not to mess with using hard-coded physical paths to the config file either.
Edit:
To make it clearer, I will point out what and why I want to achieve. The idea is that the library and the web project will be developed as separate products - there will be no user or application specific information in the configuration of the library, so it will not change for different use scenarios. It is also rather specific to the class library functionality rather than the end application. It makes sense for me to keep the library's configuration information bundled within it (similar to Java, where a spring context xml file, or a properties file, get bundled with the jar of the library). I'd like to avoid having to copy the configuration in each app/web config of the consumer application. There will be cases where the consumer application is developed by third parties, and I do not want to rely on them doing their configuration right for my stuff to work. Again, the only issue here is not having the config file copied to the right place.
If those are static, internal settings that nobody should see or change, wouldn't you be better off having a file with the configuration included within the class library as an embedded resource? Either that or just a static class with the settings.
That way you'd be certain that nobody alters it, which in your scenario seems to be a plus.
I have come along a way to work arround the described issue, still not a very pleasant one to my requirements.
The solution is to take advantage of the application configuration (web.config in web apps, or app.config) which is always available. I have added as settings the absolute paths to the config file for each library. So I ended up with:
<!--
THIS IS IN THE WEB.CONFIG FILE
-->
<appSettings>
<add key ="ClassLibrary_ConfigPath"
value ="{My Publish Output Folder}\ClassLibrary.dll.config"/>
</appSettings>
and the class library now uses the following code to load its configuration:
Configuration config = null;
try
{
var exeConfigPath = this.GetType().Assembly.Location;
config = ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(exeConfigPath);
}
catch (Exception e)
{
if (!IsConfigurationNotFoundError(e))
{
// IsConfigurationNotFoundError logic skipped for brevity
var exeConfigPath =
ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ClassLibrary_ConfigPath"];
if (exeConfigPath != null)
{
config = ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(exeConfigPath);
}
}
else
{
throw;
}
}
While this works, I will wait for a better solution if possible. Still, I do not have to copy the entire ClassLibrary.dll.config into the web.config file, but now I must manage filesystem locations and be aware of app-setting names. What I really want is the consumer app of the ClassLibrary.dll not to deal with its configuration in any way. If it were a desktop app, I have this covered, as Visual Studio copies the ClassLibary.dll.config appropriately. I hope there is a way to make it work smoothly for web apps.
The short answer is: you can't. You have to merge both configuration sections and place all settings in the main configuration file of your application. In case of the web application it would be the web.config. Read this
I am building my site with a web deployment project but the build fails with a number of errors all relating to the "#include virtual" directives in my master page.
The includes are necessary to import a set of centrally managed html template files.
Here is an example of the include directive and associated error:
<!-- #include virtual="/v3/sits/pdpdev/assets-templates/inc/head.html" -->
/PDPRegistration.csproj/Pages/ContentPage.Master(15):
error ASPPARSE: Failed to map the path
'/v3/sits/pdpdev/assets-templates/inc/head.html'.
The error for each included file actually appears multiple times. I'm not sure what is being mapped or why, but this was never a problem until I started using WDP (which I wanted to alter web.config depending on the build environment, among other things.)
The project is built locally on my PC and then copied to the web server via a mapped drive. I found a few solutions on the 'net involving IIS metabase - they weren't quite clear to me, and I'm not sure if they apply given how I build and deploy the project (that is, would I have to build on the same system as IIS in order to make use of the metabase?)
Can anyone suggest how I can get my project to build with WDP?
Although SSI's are available within the Framework, the preferred way of doing include is to wrap the content from the file into a User Control (.ascx) as per the MSDN documentation See also: support.microsoft.com/kb/306575
I have an ASP.NET 3.5 Website (visual studio lingo), but the site continues to grow and is looking rather cowboyish among other things. I'd like to see this get converted into a Web Application (namespaces and all).
Is this something that can be easily done in Visual Studio? If not, are there any other tools out there that could create all of the namespaces, etc. automagically?
Well, it turns out that the option "Convert to web application" does NOT exist for "websites". The option "Convert to web application" does exist only for "web applications" !!!!
[emphasis mine]
So, here's the deal, to do the
conversion, you need to:
Add a new "Web Application" to your VS 2008 solution (File->Add->New
Project->C#->Web->ASP.NET Web
Application).
Afterwards, you copy all the files in the old "website" to your newly
created "web application", and
override any files created in it by
default
The next step is the most ugly, you need to "manually" add the references
in your "website" to the new "web
application". I thought the VS 2008
PowerCommands toy would do this for me
as it does copy references from other
project types, but it didn't. You have
to do it by yourself, manually, and
you have to be cautious in this step
if you have multiple versions of the
same assembly (like AJAXToolkit in my
case) or assemblies that have both GAC
and local versions or so.
Keep repeating the last step and trying to build the "web application".
You'll keep getting errors like "
'....' is unknown namespace. Are you
missing an assembly reference? ". Make
sure you have none of those except the
ones where '....' is replaced by the
IDs of the server controls you use. In
other words, keep adding references
and building the project until only
the errors that exist because of
missing .DESIGNER.CS or .DESIGNER.VB
files.
Afterwards, go to the "web application" root project node in VS
2008 solution explorer, and right
click it, then you WILL find the
option "Convert to web application".
What this option does is actually
making small changes to the "#Page"
and "#Control" directives of pages and
controls, and creating the required
.DESIGNER.CS or .DESIGNER.VB files.
Try building the "web application" again. If you get errors, see what
references may be missing and/or go
click the "Convert to web application"
again. Sometimes, if there's any error
other than those caused of missing
DESIGNER files, not all the
pages/controls will have those
DESIGNER files created for them.
Fixing the non DESIGNER problem and
clicking "Convert to web application"
again should do the job for this.
Once you are done successful VS build, you should be ready to go.
Start testing your web application.
Optionally, you can right click the
"web application" root project node in
VS 2008 Solution Explorer and click
"Properties" then go to the tab "Web"
to set the "web application" to a
virtual folder in IIS (you can create
new virtual directory from there in
VS). If you want to use the IIS
virtual directory that the old
"website" used, you need to remove
that from IIS first.
Update: When testing your pages, pay MOST ATTENTION to classes in
"App_Code" folder, especially those
with NO NAMESPACE. Those can be a big
trap. We had a problem with two
extension method overloads in the same
static class that had no namespace,one
extends DateTime? (Nullable)
and calls another overload that
extends DateTime itself. Calling the
other overload as extension method
passed VS 2008 compilation and gave us
a compilation error ONLY IN RUNTIME
(With IIS). Changing the call to the
other overload from calling it as
extension method to calling it as
normal static method (only changing
the call in the same class, calls from
other classes remained extension
method calls) did solve this one, but
clearly, it's not as safe as it used
to be in VS 2005. Especially with
classes with no namespaces.
Update2: During the conversion, VS 2008 renames your "App_Code" to
"Old_App_Code". This new name sounds
ugly, but DO NOT RENAME IT BACK. In
the "web application" model, all code
will be in one assembly. In runtime,
the web server does not know what web
project type you are using. It does
take all code in "App_Code" folder and
create a new assembly for it. This
way, if you have code in folder named
"App_Code", you'll end up with RUNTIME
compilation errors that the same types
exist in two assemblies, the one
created by VS, and the one created by
IIS / ASP.NET Development Server. To
avoid that. leave the "Old_App_Code"
with the same name, or rename it to
ANYTHING EXCEPT: "App_Code". Do not
place any code in such "App_Code"
folder and prefereably do NOT have a
folder with such name in your "web
application" at all.
I know this since before but forgot it
now as I have not used "website" model
for long :(.
Walkthrough: Converting a Web Site Project to a Web Application Project in Visual Studio at MSDN
If your website application grows.. it's better to split it into several projects. Conversion from Web Site project to Web Application project won't help much.
If you're having problems getting your new Web Application Project to build check the File Properties in Visual Studio of all 'helper' classes. For a project I was converting the Build Action was set to Content whereas it should have been Compile.
I've now successfully migrated one Website project to a web application and there is quiet a few gotchas to look out for.
Having ReSharper at your disposal helps a lot in refactoring the aspx files.
Set up your solution and create an empty WebApplication
Copy all file over
aspx files in website projects don't have a namspace. Wrap your classes in the appropriate namespaces
During copying, all my pages in subfolders got renamed to my project name and the foldername, so I got 40ish public partial class FolderName_Projectname : Page If neccessary rename all files using Resharper or manually.
If you encounter multiple errors like "There is already a member Page_Load() defined", this is most likely due to incorrect class names und duplication
After adding a namespace
Replace CodeFile in all aspx pages with Codebehind and especially pay attention to files i your subfolder. Make sure Inhertis="" doesn't contain the relative path. Your namespaces take care of everything. So the correct format is Inherits="Namespace.classname".
If your class has a namespace NaSpa and a filename foo.cs it would be Inherits="NaSpa.foo"
After you have prepared all your files (don't forget your master pages), run "Convert to web application". If you encounter errors afterwards, rinse and repeat.
If you encounter errors of the sort "TextBoxName can't be found are you missing a reference", make sure you did not forget to sanitize your aspx pages. A good indicator is to check the automatically generated designer files. If TextBoxName does not appear in there, the conversion did not succeed completely.
Resolve any missing dependencies.
Build
Create a New Web Application in VS 2010.
1. Using Windows Explorer copy all your files into you project folder.
2. In VS 2010 solution explorer show all files.
3. Select the files and folders - right click include in project.
4. Right click the project solution explorer and select Convert to Web Application.
There are quite a few small differences, such as the App_Code folder will get renamed to old_app_code - that surprisingly doesn't cause any errors. The TypeName on your object data sources and the inherits on the #Page tag might need the [ProjectName]. prefix appended globally. For example if your type name was "BusinessLogic.OrderManager" and your project name is InventorySystem you would need to change it to InventorySystem.BusinessLogic.OrderManager. Also a few display changes, such as required field validators don't default to red font anymore, they default to black.
I was facing the same problems initially. After following the Wrox Professional ASP.NET 4.0 book, I found the following solution for my case.
I first created a new web application. Copied all the website files into the web application folder. Right click on the application, and click conver to web application.
You might ask why you need to convert a web app into a web app. The answer is, that when you create a website, you simply code the .cs file where-ever required.
A web application, however declares .design.cs (or .vb) and a .cs file for the code and design section automatically.
NEXT: Remove all manual references, like 'Inherits' attribute in the PAGE directive, to other files in your website, since name spaces WILL take care of referencing the classes centrally.
I also faced a problem, since I had not included OBJ and BIN folder in my project.
If you think you are missing your BIN and OBJ folders, simply click the 'Show All Files' icon in the Solution Explorer and then right click on the missing folders and add to project. (to make sure they compile with the project.)
UPDATE:
As #deadlychambers points out in the comments: You can search everywhere by doing a "Ctrl + Shift + F" and then search for Inherits="(.*?)". This will find all occurrences and probably save you some time!
the default ASP name space does not seem to work anymore. So I cannot seem to call my User Controls.ascx pages from outside the page. Giving them a namespace and changing the default from ASP to my namespace seemed to work.
When running a web application project, at seemingly random times a page may fail with a CS0433 error: type exists in multiple DLL's. The DLL's are all generated DLL's residing in the "Temporary ASP.NET Files" directory.
Add the batch="false" attribute to the "compilation" element of the web.config file.
This problem occurs because of the way in which ASP.NET 2.0 uses the application references and the folder structure of the application to compile the application. If the batch property of the element in the web.config file for the application is set to true, ASP.NET 2.0 compiles each folder in the application into a separate assembly.
http://www.sellsbrothers.com/1995
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919284
This might happen if you place .cs files in App_Code and changed their build action to compile in a Web Application Project.
Either have the build action for the .cs files in App_Code as Content or change the name of App_Code to something else. I changed the name since intellisense won't fix .cs files marked as content.
More info at http://vishaljoshi.blogspot.se/2009/07/appcode-folder-doesnt-work-with-web.html
One possible reason for this error is that there are 2 aspx pages which are having the same name in their inherits= in the <#page language=......inherits=> line.
Changing the inherits= name solves the error.
Just in case someone else shares my problem, I got this error when trying to publish a Web Site of a newly branched project, build worked perfectly.
Turns out I had forgotten to remove the checkbox for "Allow precompiled site to be updatable" under publish Settings -> Configure precompile.
As another data point, I just had this problem without any evidence of circular references as described in the links in Ben's answer. Building my web site project would fail with a few of these errors, and setting compilation batch="false" fixed it, but I didn't want to go that route as this is a large-ish production website.
This solution was in a subfolder of my D:\svn folder, which I had mapped to S:. When I opened the solution from S:, these errors occurred, but if I went straight to D:\svn and opened the solution, no errors.
I also noticed that, despite having compilation batch="true" in my web.config, when opening the solution from the mapped S: drive all my .ascx files get compiled into their own assemblies. If I open it from the physical location, the .ascx files get compiled into their respective folders' assemblies (which is how batch="true" is supposed to work).
Strange.
This error was due to conflict between class name of web form and wsdl stub(code behind file .cs) having the same class name i.e.
ASPX page: Dashboard
Class: partiacl class Dashboard
AppCode/APIServices.cs: public partial class Dashboard
Error was reproducible only on publishing the website but build and debug did not inform any error.
In my case deleting all output assemblies from bin folders in all projects in the solution solved the issue. Unfortunately I have no explanation for it.
In my case I had renamed a project, so also the dll had been renamed. When I just copied the new dll but didn't think of deleting the old one from the server, I soon had a bunch of pairs of classes with the same names. Deleting the outdated dll's was doing the trick (of cause).
None of these answers worked for me, however I did fix the problem. Since I was using VS's Publish function to deploy the web application, I selected the option to delete all existing files prior to publish in the Publish Web wizard. This forced a clean copy of the application and everything worked fine from there.
This solution might be helpful if your local debugging copy works fine but published system isn't. Also great if you don't want to take the time to track down individual dlls to delete and don't mind the production files being deleted first.
In my case, the problem was solved when I edited a Designer.cs file that still had the duplicated class name. for some reason, when i renamed the class "logout" to "logout2", in the designer file it was not automatically changed, and was still "logout", and this class name already existed in a precompiled dll in my project (that belongs to a third party web app that I work with and develop around of).
Got this problem when put a part of an aspx page into the separate user control. On my machine everything was fine, on the server got an error.
Renamed the problem class and file.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919284 Method 2: Reorder the folders in the application is writing about possible circular references
None of these solutions worked for me. Both of my conflicting DLLs were in C:\...\AppData\...\Temporary ASP.NET Files\...
The problem was that I had rolled back my source repo to an earlier version - before we moved a type from one project to another project within the same solution.
I tried deleting the newer DLL - which should not have even been there at all in the older codebase - from the "Temporary ASP.NET Files" location identified by msbuild. msbuild just put it back.
I also tried the web.config setting that some here have used successfully, but that did not work either. Although, as I write this, I realize that there were actually two MVC projects within the same solution and both had errors, so the problem may have been that I did not add the setting to both.
I tried rolling my source repo forward and cleaning and rolling back again and cleaning. Nothing.
I tried deleting everything the "Temporary ASP.NET Files" location. msbuild just put it back again.
Finally, I tried rebuilding in Visual Studio. Although the command line output and the "Errors" output both gave the same msbuild "Temporary ASP.NET Files" error, the Intellisense error - when hovering over the conflicted type - actually complained about DLLs in output directories. Apparently "Clean" and "Rebuild" were not doing their jobs. I manually deleted the DLLs in the output directories identified by Intellisense, and the problem was solved.
tl;dr - Make sure you're covering all of your web.configs with the batch setting, and try to leverage Intellisense for further clues.
My problem was linked to a .dll that was getting generated in my project folder.
If you are referencing another file, instead of doing everything you see above, what fixed my problem instantly was just deleting the .dll that was staying inside my /bin directory for my project.
The problem isn't necessarily a web.config fix - it's a circular reference that needs to get resolved. I realized that I cleared the old .dll in my original project file but not in the project that was referencing it.
I don't recommend making the modification to your web.config file because that's just a band-aid fix - not really addressing the actual problem. Do that if you don't feel like fixing the problem, but if you want to avoid future headaches, just remove the .dll from both places.
I had a partial class with the same name in two different projects.
I solved it by only leaving it in one project.
None of this solutions worked for me. Compiling in "Release" mode worked, but when I switched to "Debug" I got umpteen of this error Messages.
I don't understand why, but a simple restart of Visual Studio was my solution.
Sometimes it may help to remove the solution and create it again.
Since this use to happen when converted from VS2005 to vs2010 some references to framework 4.0 (after upgrading ) remains in the solution, even all projects are defined as 3.5.
Normally rebuilding the solution should clear these problems.
I had the same problem when I was compiling the application on a compiling server.
My controller had a simple static code, so I changed my ascx:
<%# Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="controllerName.ascx.cs" Inherits="Controls.controllerName" %>
To
<%# Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" Src="controllerName.ascx.cs" Inherits="Controls.controllerName" %>
Also removed the partial keyword from the codebehind and added a namespace to the codebehind.
This:
using System;
using System.Web.UI;
/// <summary>
/// My controller
/// </summary>
public partial class controllerName: UserControl
{
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
}
}
To this:
using System;
using System.Web.UI;
namespace Controles
{
/// <summary>
/// My controller
/// </summary>
public class controllerName : UserControl
{
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
}
}
}
And that worked for me.
For me this happened when I had my PrecompiledWeb/Publish location set to the current directory which was where the site's root folder was too.
My Web Site was then seeing the publish folder as part of the project when compiling/building and then finding duplicates in that manner.
i.e. Don't put the published/precompiled version of your site in your site's code folders.
If the DLL's are showing in a temporary folder, you should try cleaning your solution.
Posting my solution:
The issue was related to the "On-Access Scan" of Mcafee Antivirus. Disabling this solved the problem. Somehow, the ASP Temporary folder was not being used properly by ASP when the antivirus was ON.
Hope this helps someone.
App_Code folder is causing the problem , put the class outside the folder (Works fine)
App_Code folder is not designed for Web Application Projects
http://vishaljoshi.blogspot.in/2009/07/appcode-folder-doesnt-work-with-web.html
Go to Add reference and search for both the dll,
Both of the dll would have checked, uncheck one of the dll, as there are references to the same dll with different version ambiguity gets generated.
My solution was to replace CodePage="...." with CodeBehind="..." in the .aspx file. Somehow it was left as CodePage during a migration from previous .NET versions.
This page directive creates another dll file which conflicts with the projects dll file.
I faced with the problem in compile time.
I agree with the batch="true" attributes, error is telling there exist 2 assembly
Solution 1: deleting one of them
Solution2: Configure one of them
Had a similar problem, In my case, I noticed, that cleaning a solution doesn't clear the bin folder in the visual studio. There was old compiled .dll present in the folder that is causing the issue.
Solutions:
Manually delete bin folder and recompile
In case of publish, select delete existing files prior to publish.
This will solve the issue.
You should define an alias for one of your references.
In your project file .csproj add the following item:
<ItemGroup>
<Reference Include="temp1.dll">
<Aliases>MyAssembly</Aliases>
</Reference>
</ItemGroup>
After adding the above ItemGroup, MyAssembly will represent a root namespace that will contain all namespaces in the assembly temp1.dll.
Then you can have access to the type foo, which is located in temp1.dll, as follow:
using MyAssembly.foo;