CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#asp.net-mvcvisual-studio
sjkm
sjkm

Reputation: 3937

.NET (Visual Studio) Share assets between projects

I'm working with Visual Studio. There I have a solution with several web-projects (.net MVC 4). All of these web-projects use the same javascript-libs. Currently I copied the library into each project, but this can't be the final solution. What is the best approach to share those library (assets in general) between all of the projects? Just link them? Or is it possible to create a project and reference it in all projects?

Update

"Link" the javascript files from another project is not a possible solution as I would have to link thousands of files (one of the libraries I am using is ExtJs) what makes it impossible to build a project without freezing visual studio...

Possible solution

Currently I have a (Web) MVC Project called "Web" and a (Class Library) Project called "ClientScript" which contains all the JavaScript files which are shared between several Web Projects. As linking all the needed JavaScript files is not a possible solution (because it's a matter of thousands of files what causes visual studio to freeze) I copy all the needed JavaScript files to the individual Projects using the Build Events in each Web Project (Project -> Properties -> Build Events -> Post-build). My Post-build command line in the Web Project looks like this:

start xcopy "$(SolutionDir)ClientScript\Frontend\*" "$(SolutionDir)Web\Scripts" /r /s /i /y /D /E

Every time you build your Web Project all the changed Javascript files get copied from the ClientScript Project to your Web Project.

While developing the Javascripts I run a small "filewatcher" tool which automatically copies a file from the ClientScript Project to every Web Project when it changes. This way I don't have to build the Web Project every time when I make a change to one of the Javascripts.

Upvotes: 14

Views: 8949

Answers (5)

Riju Vashisht
Riju Vashisht

Reputation: 5

This is an older thread but due to complex business requirements these days applications are divided in to different modules or sub projects.Thus, brings us the need to share common resources like JavaScript files, themes and CSS style sheet files.

I personally feel that common files should be put in separate Asp .Net MVC 5 project which has following structure :ASP.NET MVC5 folder structure

enter image description here

Now the best part is you can separately manage the dependencies using Bower,NPM or Nuget package manager.

After you have organised all the files in this project host this project to your own CDN or may be on cloud. You can use Using CDN in Bundle Approach to get script or link references.

That will help you sharing common resources across all the projects.There us a short coming though if you have many developers on the team and if someone added incompatible version lib can affect all the apps.

Upvotes: 0

Eric Wardell
Eric Wardell

Reputation: 183

Anyone that stumbles across this question here in the future should know that there are now Shared Projects in Visual Studio to solve this problem. Universal Windows projects use them by default and you can create your own by downloading and installing the VS extension here: https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/315c13a7-2787-4f57-bdf7-adae6ed54450

Note: At this time they can be picky about what type of project you try to add the shared reference. I created a JavaScript shared project to share js files between a Windows store js app and an MVC web app and it would not let me do that saying they had to be of the same language. (It supports C#, C++, or JavaScript).

Upvotes: 3

Lski
Lski

Reputation: 130

Slightly older thread, but I have another way of doing a similar thing using Web Essentials, that handles the issue of not publishing correctly.

I have a shared folder outside of the projects that require the shared file, normally a 'common' project with other things in as well, but can be just a simple folder as suggested by Michael Perrenoud.

However instead of 'Add as Link' I have been creating a new bundle in the project that requires the shared js/css file, with the same name as the shared file, and then referencing that file in the shared folder using a relative reference location rather than the root based one it starts with.

To add a file from a shared folder in the root of the solution to the scripts folder use the following code in a new bundle file (*.bundle), changing the folder/file names as required.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<bundle xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://vswebessentials.com/schemas/v1/bundle.xsd">
        <settings>
                <minify>false</minify>
                <runOnBuild>true</runOnBuild>
        </settings>
        <files>
                <file>../../MySharedFolder/my-js-file.js</file>
        </files>
</bundle>

Then every time you build it recreates the bundle with the latest version, this version is then also published as expected :)

You can even create a minified version if desired by changing 'minify' to true. Or better yet you can add them loads as a bundle too if you want, you have that flexibilty.

Upvotes: 1

Anirudha Gupta
Anirudha Gupta

Reputation: 9289

When you run every new ASP.NET MVC 4 project it's take a new port then other app have take.

I simply suggest you a simple thing.

run a project which contain all the pacakages. open them webmatrix and run them as localhost:80.

You need to set the port in settings section of your site in webmatrix. Now it will rechable at localhost now you can reference all the libraries from this packages.

Upvotes: 1

Mike Perrenoud
Mike Perrenoud

Reputation: 67898

Place the JS files in a single folder, likely above all others, and add them to the project but use the "Link" option. It's part of the drop down on the "OK" button in the "Add existing item..." dialog.

Upvotes: 2

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