My question is similar to here: ASP.NET System.Anything is not defined
I am in the process of converting a website project to an MVC 4 project. To do this, I created a new MVC project and imported all of my content from the previous website. Both projects are in VB, and I'm using Visual Studio 2010 SP1, with both the MVC 4 update and TFS 2012 update applied.
I now have errors popping up when I build the MVC project. Things like "Type 'System.Web.UI.Webcontrol' is not defined." When I hover over the error, two of the prompts I get to fix it are
1) Change 'System.Web.UI.WebControl' to 'Global.System.Web.UI.WebControl'
2) Change 'System.Web.UI.WebControl' to 'WebControl'
Both of these seem to fix it, but does anyone know why I can't use "System.Web.UI.WebControl" to refer to this class? I'd rather not change all of my code... there are 100s of thousands lines in there.
Update: Outside of the System and System.Web.UI namespaces, I can also drop the 'System.'. So 'System.Drawing.Color' would become 'Drawing.Color'.
There exists another namespace containing System in your solution somewhere (e.g. Abc.System.def) - probably in a referenced library. After the conversion, the project file probably imported the prefix to System in said namespace (e.g. Abc), so when you type in System, it resolves to Abc.System.
I posted this question before I had whittled down as much of the compile errors as possible.
It appears that after I had removed all the System. references from the previous App_Code classes, the real errors started appearing. There were all sorts of messages about aspx controls not existing.
Ultimately, it seemed that I needed to right-click on the .aspx pages from my website project and choose 'Convert to Web Application.' This generated a .aspx.designer.vb file with the asp.net control declarations in yet another partial class.
After doing that for all pages, I am now able to use System. throughout the app.
To others who've asked, this System. error was only affecting the non-page code. .aspx, .aspx.vb, .ascx, .ascx.vb, .ashx, etc., files were not affected.
This does make some sense, anyhow, as I had previously pulled in all the App_Code libraries prior to pulling in the pages, and the site compiled. After importing the pages and their code behinds, the order of the errors was just odd. But I stuck with it and found the underlying cause.
Thanks for the willingness to help. If you have any other questions, I'd be glad to respond.
I'm working on an MVC3 project and receive the following error:
Parser Error Message: Could not load type 'GodsCreationTaxidermy.MvcApplication'.
Source Error:
Line 1: <%# Application Codebehind="Global.asax.cs" Inherits="GodsCreationTaxidermy.Core.MvcApplication" Language="C#" %>
The error I get is cannot load GodsCreationTaxidermy.Core.MvcApplication but in this screen shot the Core part isn't displaying in the error:
Does anyone have any ideas or a solution to this error?
Check that the project output path (project properties / Build) is set to bin and not bin\Release or bin\Debug
For some reason IIS (VS development Server or Local IIS) always accesses the libraries from the bin directory (and won't look up for subdirectories)
Your local web server is running different code than what you're actually working on. Ensure you have stopped debugging, stop your local web server, clean and rebuild as Peter suggested, double-check your global.asax and global.asax.cs, and try again.
If this doesn't work and you are using local IIS, try removing the site in IIS Manager and recreating it manually.
Try modifying your global.asax file (simple add a space somewhere) and re-run. this will force the built in webserver to refresh and recompile the global.asax file.
Also do a clean and rebuild - should fix the problem
This happens sometimes if you change namespace information (project or class level) after the global.asax is generated.
Right click on the Global.asax file and select "Open With" and then select "XML (Text) Editor with Encoding" (other editors may work as well, but this is what I use).
Then edit the "Inherits" section in the XML directive
<%# Application Codebehind="Global.asax.cs" Inherits="GodsCreationTaxidermy.MvcApplication" Language="C#" %>)
so that it matches the actual full name of your Application class. And that's it.
Another option is to copy off all your code from Global.asax.cs and then delete and create another Global.asax file (and then copy the code back into Global.asax.cs).
I closed and reopened visual studio and it worked.
I had to go to BUILD -> CONFIGURATION MANAGER and -- ahem -- check the box next to my project to ensure it actually gets built.
I had this issue today, and it took me a while to find the cause.
Basically, my main VS2015 project was including a sub-project which had been built using a higher version of .Net Framework.
Bizarrely, when you have this problem, VS2015 will happily report that the solution has built okay, but when you try and run the website, it just gives you that misleading error, suggesting that your Global.asax.cs file is wrong.
So, if you see this error, and Cleaning/Rebuilding doesn't help, open your Project's References tree, and check for exclamation marks.
Also, check your Output window for messages like this:
The primary reference "C:\Projects\Business Objects 4\bin\Release\BusinessObjects.dll"
could not be resolved because it was built against
the ".NETFramework,Version=v4.5" framework.
This is a higher version than the currently targeted framework
".NETFramework,Version=v4.0".
The solution, of course, is to right-click on your main project, select the top tab, "Application", and change the Target Framework version to a higher version which matches your sub-project.
It's annoying that Visual Studio 2015 will let you fully build and run Solutions which quietly contain this problem. It's asking for trouble..!
"BUILD -> CONFIGURATION MANAGER and -- ahem -- check the box next to my project to ensure it actually gets built."
That and going to the project folder in windows explorer, pressing options and unchecking the "Read only" checkbox helped.
I just encountered this on an MVC5 application and nothing was working for me. This happened right after I had tried to do an SVN revert to an older version of the project.
I had to delete global.asax.cs and then added a new one by right clicking Project -> Add New Item -> Global.asax and THAT finally fixed it.
Just thought it might help someone.
I was working on an older 'folder based' ASP.NET web project (which I loathe) - and found this to be my fix:
Create an App_Code folder (if you didn't have one already)
Move the Global.asax.vb file into the App_Code folder
The markup in Global.asax can leave out any namespaces (at least, for this style of project, afaik):
<%# Application Codebehind="Global.asax.vb" Inherits="MyApp" Language="VB" %>
...where "MyApp" is the name of the class being defined in Global.asax.vb
Delete the .vs directory from the solution root. Clean. Rebuild.
This issue drives me bonkers once in awhile and I inevitably end up here paging through answers. I suspect there are multiple causes that can produce this exception, this once works for me.
You can also check your site's properties in IIS. (In IIS, right-click the site and choose Properties.) Make sure the Physical Path setting is pointing to the correct path for your application not some other application. (That fixed this error for me.)
Empty the bin folder. Build all the dependent class libraries and refer them in the main project, and build the complete solution.
Source
I have to report that I tried at least 4 suggestions from this post. None of them worked. Yet I am happy to report that I recovered by retrieving from back up. Only had to update my last code changes from log file. Took less then 10 minutes. Spent 3 times that reading this post and trying other suggestions. Sorry.
It was a very weird error. Good luck to anyone else encountering this gremlin.
I have same problem when I have 2 instance of Visual Studio running same project. So I closed both Visual Studio and opened only one instance and It works fine now!
This issue I was solved by giving right permission of the folder as well as check from IIS.
I was given permission to everyone as I am testing in my local environment. But in publish mode I think we give only permission to ASP.Net user.
I too faced the same problem. Despite of following every Answer it didnt work.
Then I changed the "Inherits=namespace.class" to "Inherits=fully qualified assemble name" i.e "Inherits=namespace.class,assemblyname, Version=, Culture=, PublicKeyToken="
Hope it helps.
This can also happen if you accidentally forget to set your VS solution to "Multiple Startup Projects" if you are running a Web and WebApi from the same solution.
You can check this by right-clicking on Solution in the Solution Explorer and select 'Properties". Then look for 'Startup Projects'.
I spent multiple days on this issue. I finally got it resolved with the following combination of suggestions from this post.
Change platform target to Any CPU. I did not have this configuration currently, so I had to go to the Configuration Manager and add it. I was specifically compiling for x64. This alone did not resolve the error.
Change the output path to bin\ instead of bin\x64\Debug. I had tried this several times already before I changed the platform target. It never made a difference other than getting an error that it failed to load the assembly because of an invalid format.
To be clear, I had to do both of these before it started working. I had tried them individually multiple times but it never fixed it until I did both.
If I change either one of these settings back to the original, I get the same error again, despite having run Clean Solution, and manually deleting everything in the bin directory.
The solution for me wasn't any of the above.
I had to delete (and not recreate) Global.asax and Global.asax.cs.
These files existed in the folder, even though they weren't referenced in the project.
Apparently the build still saw them.
Since I use OWIN with Startup.cs, the Global.asax file was obsolete and there was no issue with deleting it.
Yes, I read all the answers. However, if you are me and have been pulling out all of what's left of your hair, then try checking the \bin folder. Like most proj files might have several configurations grouped under the XML element PropertyGroup, then I changed the OutputPath value from 'bin\Debug' to remove the '\Debug' part and Rebuild. This placed the files in the \bin folder allowing the Express IIS to find and load the build. I am left wondering what is the correct way to manage these different builds so that a local debug deploy is able to find and load the target environment.
I also got the same error...check the name of the Application you developed properly ie. the namespace and the assembly name alloted and also try physically changing the name of the folder created for the application, all of this should be same as the name in the above namespace present in the file global.asax
I also got the same error...check the IIS Configuration of your Virtual Directory and be sure that Properties - ASP.NET - ASP.NET Version is the same of Project Properties - Application - Target Framework. (That fixed this error for me.)
My app was built in an older version of VS, and didn't have a bin folder. I had upgraded it to a newer version, and had a nightmare getting it to deploy. I finally tracked this error down to the Project > Properties > Application. The Target Framework was set to 2.0; changing it on the server to match in the IIS Manager/App Pool solved the issue for me.
I found that changing the Namespace on the project, without refactoring that across the whole solution was my problem. Check your project Properties and see what your namespace is, ensure that lines up, across the board.
The problem for me is that I didn't include global.asax.cs in my project. And because I was copying files from a .net 4.5 to a 4.0 I didn't comment out lines that are not needed in 4.0. Because it was not included visual studio compiled it anyway without issues. But when I included it, it highlighted the lines that cause problems.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
//using System.Web.Http;
using System.Web.Mvc;
//using System.Web.Optimization;
using System.Web.Routing;
namespace YourNameSpace
{
public class WebApiApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication
{
protected void Application_Start()
{
AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();
//GlobalConfiguration.Configure(WebApiConfig.Register);
FilterConfig.RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);
RouteConfig.RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
//BundleConfig.RegisterBundles(BundleTable.Bundles);
}
}
}
I spent literally a day trying to resolve this.
The only thing that worked was deleting the .sln file, creating a new one, and adding the projects back in one by one.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ - Programming - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For my case, the web assembly was part of GAC... so after build, it need to installed in GAC and it worked.
I encountered this error message and eventually discovered that the error message was misleading. In my case there appears to have been a routing issue in IIS which caused the global.asax from another site on the web server to be read thus generating the error.
In IIS, my site was bound to http:*80:webservices.local and contained an application called MyAPI. I received the dreaded message when calling the MyAPI application using the web server's ip address.
In order to successfully call my application I had to add a host file entry for webservices.local on all of the machines that called the MyAPI application. Then all of my requests had to be prefixed with http://webservices.local/MyAPI/ in order to route correctly.
I tried absolutely everything here and nothing worked. My project was in VS 2013. I have since upgraded to VS 2015 and have been creating all of my new applications in 2015 but loading, compiling, building etc all of my old apps that were built in 2013 in that version.
I ended up just loading the solution in 2015 and it resolved it for me.
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.