{"id":157,"date":"2010-04-17T21:11:52","date_gmt":"2010-04-17T21:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.rabihtawil.com\/?p=157"},"modified":"2023-01-13T22:38:39","modified_gmt":"2023-01-13T22:38:39","slug":"using-c-and-vb-in-the-same-web-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.raytawil.com\/?p=157","title":{"rendered":"using c# and vb in the same web project"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can you have both c# and visual basic in the same web site project?<\/p>\n

Definitely! It simply wouldn’t make sense from a new project standpoint, code reviews, coding standards, continuity, project maintenance, etc.<\/p>\n

however, people still want it.\u00a0 to-date i never really tried (and that’s been my answer).\u00a0 I was presented with a usable scenario of why you may need (not want, need) to do this, so I finally tried it.\u00a0 the answer: yes…kinda…sometimes.<\/p>\n

let’s assume we have a web site structure like this:<\/p>\n

we have the App_Code folder and a .cs and a .vb file in the same projects (separated into sub-folders).\u00a0 note that the project sees them as folders (yellow folder icon) in the special folder.\u00a0 each class within there basically has a “hello world” function only, like this in the c# file:<\/p>\n

<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Source code<\/a><\/td><\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>
public<\/span> string<\/span> SayHelloCS(<\/span>)<\/span>\n    {<\/span>\n      return<\/span> "Hello from CS"<\/span>;<\/span>\n  }<\/span><\/pre><\/div><\/div>\n
and the visual basic file has a similar function emitting \"Hello from VB.\"<\/pre>\n
now, if you run default.aspx in this structure, this is what you will see:<\/p>\n
The files ‘\/WebSite5\/App_Code\/VBCode\/Class2.vb’ and ‘\/WebSite5\/App_Code\/CSCode\/Class1.cs’ use a different language, which is not allowed since they need to be compiled together.<\/em><\/p>\n
interesting?\u00a0 probably not, but it makes sense…so how do we overcome.\u00a0 we use a configuration option called codeSubDirectories<\/a>.\u00a0 here’s what we need to add to our <compilation> node in our web.config:<\/p>\n
<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Source code<\/a><\/td><\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>
<<\/span>compilation debug=<\/span>"false"<\/span>><\/span>\n          <<\/span>codeSubDirectories><\/span>\n            <<\/span>add directoryName=<\/span>"VBCode"<\/span>\/><\/span>\n            <<\/span>add directoryName=<\/span>"CSCode"<\/span>\/><\/span>\n          <\/<\/span>codeSubDirectories><\/span>\n       <\/<\/span>compilation><\/span><\/pre><\/div><\/div>\n
once we add those codeSubDirectory nodes, let’s “look” at what the project structure looks like now:<\/p>\n
as you can see the code folders are now “special” in the eyes of visual studio.\u00a0 now if we browse default.aspx we will see:<\/p>\n
<\/a>Source code<\/a><\/td><\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>
Hello world from CS. Hello world from VB<\/pre><\/div><\/div>\n
<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Can you have both c# and visual basic in the same web site project? Definitely! It simply wouldn’t make sense from a new project standpoint, code reviews, coding standards, continuity, project maintenance, etc. however, people still want it.\u00a0 to-date i never really tried (and that’s been my answer).\u00a0 I was presented with a usable scenario […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[110,6],"tags":[128,20,21,26,27,87,88,91,92,94,95,129],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raytawil.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raytawil.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raytawil.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raytawil.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raytawil.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.raytawil.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":365,"href":"http:\/\/www.raytawil.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions\/365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raytawil.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raytawil.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raytawil.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}