How can I easily count the number of Forms in a large solution?

Question

I have Visual Studio solution containing 20+ winforms projects. I have to do a task where I have to inspect every form, and I have to give an effort estimate to my project lead. This estimate is best given in terms of the number of forms. It's useful to report progress in terms of "27/275 forms done, spend 3 hours".

For this project, I use VS 2008 and Resharper 5.

A more general answer, for instance on "how to count the number of classes deriving from a specified class" would also be nice.

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 04 '10 at 10:11

Here is a simple easy way which works if your projects are organised in a nice heirarchal way - open Windows File Explorer at the root of the solution, and do a search on file suffix, once the search is finished the count of files will be in the Explorer status bar at the bottom.

For classes that used C#, i could do a whole solution search for the text : MyBaseClass, in the Find window this would return all the classes which derived from whatever MyBaseClass i happened to nominate. I'm not sure of the syntax for R# but you should be able to do something similar.

Lastly, i believe ReSharper has a function for this, but it might be only available in the paid version.

the simple windows explorer answer works well enough for now; I'll check out the other answers later today — Marijn, Nov 04 '10 at 10:28
BTW - I meant ReSharper 5 when I used "R# 5"; updated my question. — Marijn, Nov 04 '10 at 12:30

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 04 '10 at 10:27

2

This is built into ReSharper - no code or extra tools needed. I don't have ReSharper 5 in front of me, but on version 4.5, I'd use the menu command under ReSharper > Search > Find Usages Advanced.

From there you can generate a list of all classes that inherit from System.Windows.Form. Then, either look at the list of search results in the IDE, or export it to a file for further inspection.

answered Nov 04 '10 at 10:27

Tim Robinson

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If you don't have ReSharper, take a look at slugster's answer – Marijn Nov 04 '10 at 12:31

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:11

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I'd use Reflection for this, which will mean you will have to build the entire solution first.

Then make a list of all the assemblies, and then get all namespaces a described here.

Then you can get all the classes in a namespace, as described here.

It's fairly easy to check whether the type is derived from Form or not.

Hope this helps...

edited May 23 '17 at 12:11

Community

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answered Nov 04 '10 at 10:11

Gerrie Schenck

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I was looking for a more out-of-the-box solution; the other answers are better in this respect. – Marijn Nov 06 '10 at 12:44

How can I easily count the number of Forms in a large solution?

3 Answers3