How Visual Studio.Net Upgrade Your Solution

Weekly source code for this week will be published a bit later

When opening an VS.Net 2005 solution in VS.Net 2008 to which version will the upgrade wizard try to upgrade your solution too? Answer: .Net framework 3.5

The upgrade wizard will always try to upgrade to the current .Net framework for that version of VS.Net for example:

• VS.Net 2005: .Net Framework 2.0
• VS.Net 2008: .Net Framework 3.5
• VS.Net 2010: .Net Framework 4.0

You will be asked the question if you wish to upgrade but you can always say "No". If you say no then the solution will stay in the old version using the multi-target feature. if you wish to later upgrade (like making use of the new LINQ features in .Net framework 3.5) you can do so under the properties of the project.

Follow-Up: Make Web Service Configurable

Base upon the comments of a reader on my last weekly source code posting is that there is an additional 2x ways to set the URL location of a Web Service:

string newUrl = "http://server/path/to.asmx";
MyService service = new MyService();
service.Url = newUrl;

Or in new C# 3.0 you can use object initializers:

string newUrl = "http://server/path/to.asmx";
MyService service = new MyService {Url = newUrl};

I still prefer using a constructor.

"Daddies" Girl Zoe

Weekly Source Code: Make Web Service Configurable

Sorry for the delay, been crazy at work.

In Visual Studio.Net you call web services like the old style ASP.Net web service (not new WCF) by adding a reference to the project using Add Web Reference option. In the pop up dialog you point it to the web service URL, Visual Studio.Net will then generate the required C#/VB.Net stub classes.

But its not to say that the web service will be at the same URL location expecially if you move between development - > QA -> production environments. How do you make the web service URL configurable?

The web service stub class Reference.cs (for C#) or Reference.vb (for VB.Net) has a URL property, you can always set this property in your code but its a nice way to rather do it when you call the constructor e.g.:

MyService service = new MyService(webserviceUrl);

You do this by adding the following constructor to the MyService class:

MyService(String theUrl)
{
Url = theUrl;
}

The downside (before Visual Studio.Net 2008) is that if you update the web reference (after adding an additional web method to the web service etc) the code get regenerated meaning your code will break and you will have to add the constructor again.

Fortunately Visual Studio.Net 2008 introduce partial classes which allow splitting definition of a class across multiple files.

The Reference.cs / Reference.vb class also is a partial class so you can add an additional partial class with the same name and same namespace:

public partial class MyService
{
MyService(String theUrl)
{
Url = theUrl;
}
}

Now you can update the web service reference without worrying about such problems.

So what is partial classes? Yes they allow you to split the definition of a class across multiple source files but why? In this sample it show that its for code generation mainly since you normally generate code then add your own additions (like a constructor in this case) but if you re-generate your custom code is lost. Partial classes (and later on I will introduce partial methods) resolve this problem. Why did MS add it? Look at LINQ to SQL which also generate code, now you can add custom logic like validation with partial methods without ever worrying that re-generation will break your logic.