In Visual Studio 2022 we have the classic search function with which we can find a particular string of text in our solution. I'm wondering if there is a way to lookup all the classes inside a file that are defined in a package that is imported via the using directive.
Say for example i'm using package x.Business in my namespace using x.Business; is there a way to then lookup the classes inside this namespace which are coming from this imported package?
What I think you're asking is... "In any class file in my own solution, I want to be able to identify which types used in it (for parameters, variables, etc) are from a particular assembly that is in a using directive."
I don't know of any tool that does this, but the easiest way to identify usages in your file is to comment out the using directive. Any types, methods, etc that exist in that namespace will turn red showing that they can't be found.
(By the way, now is a good time to learn the proper term for those lines at the top of the class files. They're called "using directives", and they're not importing a whole package necessarily, but rather a particular namespace. Not to be confused with "using statements", which are a statement you can write inside of a method that automatically handles disposing of resources.)
Related
I am using resharper to do a big refactoring and i keep going from file to file and adding the same namespace over and over again in the "using" section
is there anyway to add a "using" statement to every single file in a folder, namespace or project? Even though some files wont need the reference, most do, so it will save lots of time.
I'd try a regex in the "Find and Replace" dialog:
Replace
^using System;$
with
using System;\nusing xxx;
This works only for files using the System namespace, but maybe you find another common namespace or structure element. After doing so you can refactor all files in your solution(/folder) with the resharper. That will remove doubled usings.
Update: Did you introduce new namespaces for existing types? There is a refactor function called "move". It will move your type to a new namespace and preserve the references.
Open ReSharper Options / Languages / C# / Namespace Imports
Add "Namespaces that should always be imported"
Run Code Cleanup against solution or project. You may want to create profile (Options / Tools / Code Cleanup) with only Optimize Using Directives module.
VS will add them for you. When you add a symbol in a referenced assembly, but without a using statement for the symbol, you will get a marker against the symbol. Press control-period (or use the mouse) and the first option will add the using statement for you.
Otherwise you could write a VS macro to open each project source file in turn and insert the statement.
I feel it's worth adding an answer to this old question, now that we have "global using directives" in C#10. It renders this requirement moot for newer codebases targeting C#10 and above.
We can now just put one global using in one file, for it to be accessible everywhere in the solution.
global using yournamespace
See the documentation here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/whats-new/csharp-10#global-using-directives
When you encounter a file, one-by-one, press CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+F for the automated file cleanup routine. It just takes a second to run, and will do what you're looking for, but not just for System.
not sure if R# has a way to do solution wide file cleanups.
I am brand new to Visual Studio. I have been coding in Java for many years but have taken on a project which requires me to use c# and visual studio 2012.
What I need to know is how to utilize a different SDK. I want to use something called Honeywell SDK instead of Visual Studios inherent SDK but I cannot find out where to change this setting. If anyone has an answer that would be greatly appreciated!
as a Java developer you are probably used to imports and presumably understand how to use the import statement to import the classes in a namespace.
In C#, the first thing you must do is add a reference to the library containing the methods you require - this is normally done by right clicking your project in Solution Explorer, clicking add reference, and then selecting browse to browse to the location what is normally a DLL containing the library methods in question.
Once you have added a reference to your project, you can access the classes in the library either using a fully qualified name, e.g. to access the Thread class in .NET's System.Threading namespace for example, fully qualified use would be as follows:
System.Threading.Thread thread = new Thread();
Alternatively, you can put a using directive at the top of each file where you intend to use the client to avoid the need for the fully qualified name. For example:
using System.Threading;
Then in code, you can simply use the shortened version of the class name by itself:
Thread thread = new Thread();
As you can see, the using directive is effectively C#'s equivalent of Java's import directive. Note that to import all classes in a namespace you do not need the .* wild card at the end of the using directive as you do an equivalent Java import statement.
In practice, you may need to refer to the documentation you have to confirm what namespaces they use, and what files you need to add references to to use their libraries as this detail will be vendor specific. For more detail and a more thorough explanation of the using directive then the MSDN documentation is likely to be the most helpful source:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/sf0df423%28v=vs.80%29.aspx
and:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/z2kcy19k%28v=vs.80%29.aspx
There is no inherent SDK per-se in a .NET project, though normally references to the .NET framework and default using directives will be added. You will probably find these useful as they contain core functionality and the references normally added by default in a new project will provide you access to things such as collections and so forth.
One final note is that C# has a using statement, as well as the using directive, so if searching for additional information on the directive, be careful not to confuse it for the using statement.
Can anyone tell clearly about the usage of header files and namespaces in C#?
Because in C++ I was using ******.h files to read library functions. And when I saw some sample programs in C# they were missing, Can anyone tell me why?
I'm using C# to develop a custom tool for a CAD application. Whenever I use the appropriate function to open the file (CAD file), the compiler is giving me an error stating that the function names which I supply are not available in the context. Here what does meant by context?
When I opened the help file of that CAD application the function which is responsible for opening the file has bee mentioned under a header file called uf_part.h. But there is an namespace called NXOpen.
I used the namespace as using NXOpen in Visual Basic, isn't that enough? DO I need to supply that header file as well? If so, how?
C# is more "programmer friendly". When dealing with files of the same project, instead of manually specifying "header file" every time, it will go and look in all the project files for a match according to the namespace.
To understand this, do the following steps:
Start new project in Visual Studio. (No matter what type, WinForms or Console)
Right click the project and add new class.
In your main class note you can see the new class you just added, without adding any header.
How this is done? Simply by having the same namespace to both classes. The .NET engine is smart enough to link all those classes together.
Now, when it comes to external code meaning code sitting in a different DLL file the trick is to add reference to that DLL (in Studio --> Right click project --> Add reference --> Browse) then you need to specify you are going to use that DLL by adding a using statement on top:
using ExternalDllName.ExternalNamespace;
That's about it. Unlike C++ you don't need to have .h file as .NET will automatically search the referenced DLL files for a match.
There's no such thing as header file in .net, because all needed metadata is contained in referenced assembly itself.
Have you referenced needed assembly in you project?
Also please mind that there's no such thing as "function" in C#, only class methods (which means that you have to specify object or static class in you call).
Also: General Structure of a C# Program
Compilers for modern languages, such as C# or Java store within compiled files information on the classes and methods they contain, and this information can be used to check the correctness of calls made from one source file to another or to library classes.
When C was invented disk space, memory and CPU power were precious resources and this approach would not have been possible. Header files were introduced to allow the compiler to check that different source files conformed to the same interface. When C++ was invented the approach described above could have been possible, but I guess that it was chosen to stick to the C one for compatibility reasons.
In .NET and Visual Studio projects, the convention is to let the physical directory structure of your project resemble the namespace structure of the project. I totally agree with that, and every time I work on a project that violates this guideline, I have trouble finding types, because it's often unclear how to navigate the namespace hierarchy.
A problem I encounter however is that wrapping every class in a namespace is redundant, when using this guideline. Furthermore, it makes it very hard (without commercial refactoring tools) to restructure the project structure later on, because every file needs to be changed.
I believe that moving classes to a different namespace should simply be a drag 'n drop of that file in another directory.
So how can we accomplish this? Is there a way to let the compiler (or any other tool) determine the namespace my classes (during compile time), based on the directory structure of my project?
Resharper can detect namespaces in code which do not match physical layout. Unfortunately Resharper is not cheap.
AFAIK the C# compiler has no knowledge of any relationship between namespace and physical location and therefore has no such options available.
IMHO this should be built into Visual Studio.
I have 2 projects, one built in VB.NET and another in C#.NET. I want to use certain functionality of VB.NET into C#.NET and hence I have added the dll file of VB.NET solution into C#.NET as a reference by browsing the dll from my system.
Say dll name for VB.NET is myData.dll
In my C#.NET project I am trying to declare it as a namespace i.e. "using myData;" and its giving me an error of "Type or namespace name could not be found"
Am I missing something??
A clue about how your VB.NET project is organized. There are some things that can go wrong and you obviously are not aware of them, so lets find out.
According to our information the dll is added as reference.
Say dll name for VB.NET is myData.dll
Ok, so that is the DLL and you reference it.
declare it as a namespace i.e. using myData;
No, you do NOT declare "it as a namespace". You tell the compiler to also look in this namespace for classes. Now, you do NOT tell to compiler whether myData.dll actually contains the namespace myData. This is a totally different thing. You can do without using - if you prefix every class. Nothing in the using statement references a dll.
It could be VB.NET has wrapped another namespace around and it is myData.myData. No joke. It could also be you forgot to make the classes public.
To find out:
Open the DLL using Object Browser ("View", "ObjectBrowser") and look what namespace and classes are in the DLL.
Go and look for the class you want to use and see what it says there. You may be surprised about the classes and / or the namespace.