FAQ and Known Issues
Web Application Projects

The following is a set of frequently asked questions and known issues with the May 8, 2006 release of Web Application Projects. We are actively working on these issues and plan to have them corrected when we integrate Web Application Projects into Visual Studio 2005 SP1.

Please give feedback or report new bugs in the Web Application Forum on http://www.asp.net

Table of Contents
Item 1 - What is Web Application Projects
Item 2 - Why was it developed?
Item 3 - Are Web Site Projects still supported?
Item 4 - What web project model should I use?
Item 5 - Where can I download Web Application Projects?
Item 6 - What is the future of Web Application Projects?

Issue 1 - Report Designer
Issue 2 - Profiles
Issue 3 - Declarative Typed DataSets (.xsd files)
Issue 4 - Conversion and Source Control
Issue 5 - Mobile Web Forms
Issue 6 - Using TFS Team Build
Issue 7 - Using TFS Source Control
Issue 8 - Starting a Web Service and another Project which uses the Web Service
Issue 9 - Installing on non-English Locales
Issue 10 - Refactoring will not work for Inline code

Item 1 - What are Web Application Projects
Web Application Projects provide an alternate web project model for Visual Studio 2005. Similar to the Visual Studio .NET 2003 web project model, this new model is ideal for web site developers who are converting a Visual Studio .Net 2003 web project to Visual Studio 2005.

Item 2 - Why was it developed?
Web Application Projects allows developers to easily convert Visual Studio .NET 2003 web projects so they can be edited and run in Visual Studio 2005. It is also ideal for developers more comfortable with the project, build and compilation semantics found the Visual Studio .NET 2003 web project model.

Item 3 - Are Web Site Projects still supported?
Yes. Web Site Projects ship with Visual Studio 2005 RTM and are fully supported. For the majority of web developers, the Web Site Project model will be ideal for their web projects since it does not require a project file, is easy to deploy and can be edited remotely. 

Item 4 - What web project model should I use?
This depends on your web project and what web project model you are comfortable with. Generally speaking, if you have a complicated Visual Studio .NET 2003 web project to convert, it will be easier to use Web Application Projects. For more information, please read An Introduction to Web Application Projects to learn more about what model is best for you.

Item 5 - Where can I download Web Application Projects?
It can be downloaded from http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/reference/infrastructure/wap/default.aspx

Item 5 - What is the future of Web Application Projects?
Web Application Projects will be integrated in Visual Studio 2005, Service Pack 1, which is currently scheduled for release in the fall of 2006.

Issue 2 - Profiles
ASP.NET 2.0 adds support for a new feature called "Profile Personalization" which enables developers to easily store and retrieve profile data about a user visiting the site within a personalization database. With Visual Studio 2005 Web Site Projects, ASP.NET automatically adds a strongly typed "Profile" object to each page in the project that provides a strongly-typed mapping of all properties defined within the "profile" section of the application's web.config file. Developers can then get intellisense against this, and automatically save/retrieve values from it.

Download the "Web Profile Generator" available at http://www.codeplex.com/WebProfile and follow the directions for installing. This will allow you to run a command to generate a Web Profile for your web application.

Issue 3 - Declarative Typed DataSets (.xsd files)
If you have Strongly Typed DataSets under the App_Code directory in your VS 2005 Web Site Project, then you need to make an additional change to fix the connection string in web.config. Specifically, you need to open each DataSet in the Data Designer and select each TableAdapter and reset the connection string for the object (you can do this by selecting the TableAdapter in the designer and then changing the "ConnectionString" property in the propertygrid).

There are other known issues when using Data in Web Application Projects. We will be releasing a white paper soon to address them; please check back soon for the link to this white paper.

Issue 4 - Conversion and Source Control
There are known issues with converting a VS03 Web Project or Solution that is under source control. As a workaround, we recommend you take the following steps before doing a conversion.

1. Open the solution or project in VS03 and checkout the Web Projects and all their files.
2. Close VS03 and open the solution with Visual Studio 2005 using the file path. (don’t use open from SCC).
3. Proceed with migration as normal.
4. After migration checkin the project and all the files.

Issue 5 - Mobile Web Forms
There are known issues with converting a VS03 Web Project that contains Mobile Web Forms. The conversion will appear to succeed and will compile, but when you try to load the Mobile Web Forms in design view, you will get errors stating "This control only works in pages of type MobilePage". We are investigating a fix for the next release.

Issue 6 - Using TFS Team Build
The May 2006 release of Web Application Projects supports building with Team Build on a Team Foundation Server (TFS). However, you will need to manually add the "Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" file to your Team Foundation Server for it to work.

1. On the computer running Team Build, navigate to the "C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v8.0" directory.
2. In this directory create a "WebApplications" directory.
3. Place the "Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" file in the "WebApplications" directory. This file can be found at the same location on your developer system that has been updated with the May 2006 release of Web Application Projects.

Additionally, if you have an older version of a Web Application Project, you will need to add the WebApplication.targets line (shown in blue and bold) after the normal CSharp.targets or VBasic.targets line in your .csproj or .vbproj file (all new or newly migrated projects will have this line automatically).

<Import Project="$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v8.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" />

Issue 7 - Using TFS Source Control
There is a known issue with the enterprise source control system in the Team Foundation Server (TFS) which incorrectly identifies codebehind classes for .aspx. and .ascx files as folders.

To workaround, do not use "File/Source Control/Open from Source Control". Instead, manually get the solution using Team Explorer and open the solution from local disk.

This problem will be fixed in a future release of Team Foundation Server.

Issue 8 - Starting a Web Service and another Project which uses the Web Service
If you create a Web Application Project that is a Web Service and another project (e.g. another Web Application or console application) to consume that Web Service, you will want to run both projects when you debug (i.e. hit F5).

1. Choose the Solution node in the Solution Explorer
2. Select "Set Startup Projects…"
3. Select "Multiple startup projects" and choose your web service and project which accesses the web service.

Debug your application by pressing F5. You will see both projects running.

Issue 9 - Installing on non-English Locales
Web Application Projects are shipped in two parts: a Visual Studio 2005 addin which adds Web Application Projects and a GDR which makes small changes to Visual Studio 2005 to allow the Web Application Projects addin to work better.

The GDR contains a check to make sure you are installing on an English locale version of Visual Studio 2005. If you are running Visual Studio 2005 in another locale the install will fail. The addin has a check to make sure the GDR is installed.

The following workaround should allow you to install an English version of Web Application Projects on your localized version of Visual Studio 2005. Please note this is not a tested scenario and is only provided for testing purposes on your localized system.

Please note you will have to have an English version of Visual Studio 2005 installed on your localized version of Windows. You can run different localized versions of Visual Studio 2005 side-by-side.

1. Under Tools/Options/International Settings in Visual Studio 2005, set the language to "English"
2. Install the Web Application Projects GDR -- http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=63636
3. Install the Web Application Projects Addin -- http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/reference/infrastructure/wap/default.aspx
4. Under Tools/Options/International Settings, set the language back to your normal language.

Issue 10 - Refactoring will not work for Inline code (aspx, ascx)
It is a known issue that refactoring will not work for inline code, i.e. user code defined within a web form (.aspx) or user control (.ascx) file. We plan to address this in a future release.

How do I revert back to web site project? Is there an easy way?

dotnetCarpenter:

How do I revert back to web site project? Is there an easy way?

You should backup before any convertations. It's the easiest way :) 

I didn't convert. I just started out with the wrong project type. Anyway I'll stick with it now because I have so many references that I don't want to spend a couple of  hours doing it all again. Another thing is that Web Application will force me to be more structured in my development, which is good even though it's a time eater! lol

What about namespaces.  My initial set-up would not compile because it stated it could not find the "Global" namespace in which classes designated in the "inherits" attributes of the Page directives were supposedly located.  So I created a project namespace and added all the partial classes in the  code behind files and designer files to it.  The project then compiled and ran part way until it crashed when it said it could not see the projectname Namespace.  OK. So what should I have done instead?