Projects and Solutions

All right, we've now created a console application that both builds and runs. 0:00 To run it, just click the green start button here on the toolbar. 0:04 The program was compiled, ran, and closed without errors. 0:18 Most projects in Visual Studio will work from the very start. 0:22 I found that it's nice to start in a working environment 0:26 with some simple code that runs. 0:29 That's what project templates are all about. 0:31 Let's take a closer look at what Visual Studio did when it created our project. 0:34 We can check this out by looking at the Solution Explorer. 0:38 If you don't see the Solution Explorer pane, 0:41 you can bring it back up by clicking on View > Solution Explorer. 0:43 Right now we're dealing with a console app. 0:48 Most solutions in Visual Studio share this basic structure in the Solution Explorer. 0:51 At the highest level there's the solution, below that there are one or more projects. 0:57 Within each project there's an area for properties, the list of assemblies or 1:02 libraries that your project uses are listed under References. 1:06 Below that, there's a list of code files, programmed at CS, which is already shown 1:10 in the editor here is the C# code file that contains the code for 1:16 the console app. 1:20 App.config is a special file that provides the runtime configuration for 1:21 the console app. 1:26 Notice what happens when I click once on the App.config file. 1:27 It's displayed in the editor, but its tab is on the right side of the pane. 1:32 If I click AssemblyInfo.cs, the tab is replaced with the contents of that file. 1:36 This is a preview, so 1:42 whatever is selected in Solution Explorer shows up as a tab here. 1:44 Unless that is, if it is already opened as a tab. 1:48 I can't tell you how much this preview feature helps keeps the editor 1:52 pane cleaned up. 1:56 You can open the file as a normal tab by double-clicking on it 1:57 in the Solution Explorer or by clicking on this button in the Preview tab. 2:00 One thing you'll notice about Visual Studio is there's usually 2:05 many ways to perform the same action. 2:08 Between the toolbars, menus, context menus, keyboard shortcuts, 2:11 search facilities, buttons or links and panes, and other cues that may pop up, 2:16 there's often at least four or five different ways to do everything. 2:22 For the most part, I'm just going to show you one way. 2:25 Part of making an ID your own is picking the methods that work best for 2:29 you after you try them out. 2:33 I'll also include a list of shortcuts in the teacher's notes that you 2:35 might find handy. 2:38 Now back to the Solution Explorer. 2:39 As you create more and 2:41 more files you'll probably want to start organizing them in folders. 2:42 You can create a folder by right-clicking on the project name, 2:46 clicking on Add in the context menu that pops up and then clicking New Folder. 2:50 The new folder appears in the Solution Explorer under that project. 2:55 You can give it a name by typing over the highlighted text. 3:00 This is also how you add files to your project. 3:04 You can add files to the top level of the project or inside the folder. 3:06 Just right-click on the folder or project name, mouse over Add, then click New Item. 3:11 You can pick the type of file you want to add from a list of templates. 3:17 This is very similar to how we created a new project from an existing template. 3:21 The file templates are organized into categories on the left side of 3:26 the dialog window. 3:29 I'm going to add another class to the project, so I'll select Class. 3:31 Then I'll give it the name InputHandler.cs, and click add. 3:36 The new file is added to the project and opened in the editor window. 3:45 Notice that the file already has some boiler plate code in it. 3:49 This comes from the file template. 3:53 It named the class InputHandler after the name of the file. 3:55 Also notice that it put the class in the Treehouse.SimpleConsoleApp.Helpers 3:58 namespace. 4:04 By convention Visual Studio assumes that code in a folder 4:05 should be in its own namespace. 4:09 You can also add existing files to the project. 4:12 I've placed a file in my Documents folder that I want to add to this project. 4:15 To add it, I right-click on the project or 4:19 folder that I want to add the file to, then click Add > Existing Item. 4:22 This opens an open file dialog, 4:28 which I can use to navigate to where my file is located. 4:30 By default, because this is a C# project, 4:33 that filter down here is only set to show C# files. 4:36 If you don't see the file you're looking for, change this to All Files. 4:40 Now, I can select my file, and click Add. 4:44 A copy of the file is made and placed inside the project. 4:47 To get a better idea of what's happening behind the scenes 4:50 you can always look at the Windows File Explorer. 4:53 And easy way to get there is to right-click on the solution name and 4:56 click Open Folder in File Explorer. 4:59 This opens the file explorer and shows us the folder that contains the solution. 5:01 I'm going to have Windows show us the file name extensions. 5:07 There, that's better. 5:10 This file here with the .sln extension is the solution file. 5:12 This is the file that you click on to open the solution in Visual Studio. 5:16 Treehouse.SimpleConsoleApp contains the project. 5:20 This contains the actual files that make up the project. 5:25 Here's the Program.cs file. 5:29 Here's the App.config file. 5:31 Here's the folder we created and the C# file that we created in that folder. 5:33 This file with the .csproj extension 5:39 is the project file that contains all the settings for how to build this project. 5:42 We also see the file I copied into the project. 5:47 Because Visual Studio is a project-based IDE as opposed to a file system-based IDE, 5:51 it expects that you'll be creating, moving, and deleting files and 5:56 folders only from within Visual Studio. 5:59 It won't automatically pick up changes that happen outside of Visual Studio. 6:03 For example, if I delete this file here in the file explorer, and then 6:07 go back into Visual Studio, you'll notice that it still has the file on the project. 6:12 To get Visual Studio to recognize this change, 6:17 we need to delete the file from here. 6:20 It's the same with moving and adding files. 6:24 You can make changes in the file explorer, but you then need to come back here and 6:27 tell the ID about those changes. 6:31 In general, it's best to do everything from within Visual Studio 6:33 as much as possible. 6:37