What is the _references.js used for?

Question

What is the _references.js file used for in a new ASP.NET MVC 4 project?

score 268 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 14 '23 at 15:59

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In VS 11, Visual Studio will give you intellisense from all files that have references in the “_references.js” file.

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edited Apr 14 '23 at 15:59

HotN

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answered Apr 25 '12 at 16:21

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I didn't even appreciate why I was getting angular intellisense. <3 Visual Studio! – Dave Alperovich Apr 03 '14 at 17:50
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Yes, but where is "_references.js" referenced from? – Pap Jan 25 '19 at 10:38

Dmitry Pavlov · Answer 2 · 2016-04-13T19:12:06.303

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MSDN documentation: JavaScript IntelliSense

In brief, _references.js stores the list of JS files paths, for which you want the Visual Studio to gather and build the intelisense (aka "code complete"). The VS project adds there some common JS libraries like jQuery to build the intellisense for it. You can add a reference to your custom JS file in form like this:

/// <reference path="MyScriptFile.js" />

edited Apr 13 '16 at 19:12

answered Dec 10 '13 at 11:01

Dmitry Pavlov

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In my experience, usage by Visual Studio (2017) has grown beyond just intellisense. I found that if, for example, `jquery-2.2.2.min.js` was not mentioned in `_references.js`, then it wouldn't get deployed and there would be a run time failure using jquery. – Kit Jul 21 '17 at 09:11
...this may be some kind of interaction with TypeScript and VS's bundler. – Kit Jul 21 '17 at 09:13

Matthew Peterson · Answer 3 · 2022-04-01T16:42:11.040

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From Visual Studio 2017 forward, this file is no longer used.

edited Apr 01 '22 at 16:42

answered Jul 12 '21 at 19:01

Matthew Peterson

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What is the _references.js used for?

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