Nest (Group) source files in Visual Studio (Interproject)

Question

I am trying to develop a .net solution which contains WCF (Host + Service layer), WPF (Client), Data Layer, Proxy Layer, etc...

All of these projects contain classes that are closely related, for example:

User // data layer entity 

UserData // proxy layer data contract

IUserServices // proxy layer service contract

UserManager // service layer service

UserModel // presentation layer model

UserViewModel // presentation layer viewmodel

...

This is only one example of one data contract and one service! Any change in one of these files triggers a need to modify and verify all of the other files across the solution.

I think I need a way to group these files in solution explorer and access them neatly. I am using Visual Studio 2015,

1) I already tried "File Nesting" Extension and couldn't group the files even when they are folders apart, let alone projects.

2) I also tried putting a tag in summery of these classes to link them together which doesn't work when a project is not referencing another one!

3) There is another method that requires modifying project files and putting dependent files under each other which seems not to work when you rename the files. (also its really hard).Based on this Question

What I preferred to see in Visual Studio was a way to select a few files and group them together in another solution explorer window (or view).

Any help would be appreciated.

Extract your shared resources into their own projects. For example `MyProject.Models` for your model classes. Then you can reference that project wherever you need them. — DavidG, Aug 12 '17 at 13:53

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 19 '17 at 07:16

Most likely there is a plugin somewhere for that exact purpose. Unfortunately I'm not aware of it.

However, I'm experiencing such a need within my projects and here what I ended up with: use the search bar at the top of the Solution Explorer.

E.g. when you need to work with all of the classes above, just type "user" in the search bar. Now all the items displayed beneath contain the word user - probably this includes all the relevant classes.

Also, note that in addition to file names, the search bar look up in class name. So you can define a dummy, partial class to filter upon from the search bar. E.g.

public class UserData 
{ 
    // code goes here
}

// Then in the same file do this
#if DEBUG
public partial class MyUserTag { }
#endif

Add the partial class wherever you need - User, IUserService, etc. - so later you can filter upon that name and see all the files containing it in a Solution Explorer View.

Nest (Group) source files in Visual Studio (Interproject)

1 Answers1