Is there any way to get the Active Solution Configuration name in C# Code?

Question

I have three solution configurations in my UWP solution in Visual Studio:

• Development
• Staging
• Production

Each is a associated with a different web service and auth provider in the configuration files. In my code, how do I tell which one is which? In the past I've explicitly provided DEFINE constants, but there must be a better way by now.

Answer 1

The active solution configuration is stored in the .suo file beneath the .vs directory at the root solution folder. The .suo file has a compound file binary format, which means you can't just parse it with text manipulation tools.

However, using OpenMcdf -- a tool that can be used to manipulate these types of files -- you can easily get the active solution configuration.

Here's a console app I wrote that works. Feel free to adapt the code to your situation:

using OpenMcdf;
using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace GetActiveBuildConfigFromSuo
{
    internal enum ProgramReturnCode
    {
        Success = 0,
        NoArg = -1,
        InvalidFileFormat = -2
    }

    internal class Program
    {
        private const string SolutionConfigStreamName = "SolutionConfiguration";
        private const string ActiveConfigTokenName = "ActiveCfg";

        internal static int Main(string[] args)
        {
            try
            {
                ValidateCommandLineArgs(args);

                string activeSolutionConfig = ExtractActiveSolutionConfig(
                    new FileInfo(args.First()));

                throw new ProgramResultException(
                    activeSolutionConfig, ProgramReturnCode.Success);
            }
            catch (ProgramResultException e)
            {
                Console.Write(e.Message);
                return (int)e.ReturnCode;
            }
        }

        private static void ValidateCommandLineArgs(string[] args)
        {
            if (args.Count() != 1) throw new ProgramResultException(
                "There must be exactly one command-line argument, which " +
                "is the path to an input Visual Studio Solution User " +
                "Options (SUO) file.  The path should be enclosed in " +
                "quotes if it contains spaces.", ProgramReturnCode.NoArg);
        }

        private static string ExtractActiveSolutionConfig(FileInfo fromSuoFile)
        {
            CompoundFile compoundFile;

            try { compoundFile = new CompoundFile(fromSuoFile.FullName); }
            catch (CFFileFormatException)
            { throw CreateInvalidFileFormatProgramResultException(fromSuoFile); }

            if (compoundFile.RootStorage.TryGetStream(
                SolutionConfigStreamName, out CFStream compoundFileStream))
            {
                var data = compoundFileStream.GetData();
                string dataAsString = Encoding.GetEncoding("UTF-16").GetString(data);
                int activeConfigTokenIndex = dataAsString.LastIndexOf(ActiveConfigTokenName);

                if (activeConfigTokenIndex < 0)
                    CreateInvalidFileFormatProgramResultException(fromSuoFile);

                string afterActiveConfigToken =
                    dataAsString.Substring(activeConfigTokenIndex);

                int lastNullCharIdx = afterActiveConfigToken.LastIndexOf('\0');
                string ret = afterActiveConfigToken.Substring(lastNullCharIdx + 1);
                return ret.Replace(";", "");
            }
            else throw CreateInvalidFileFormatProgramResultException(fromSuoFile);
        }

        private static ProgramResultException CreateInvalidFileFormatProgramResultException(
            FileInfo invalidFile) => new ProgramResultException(
                $@"The provided file ""{invalidFile.FullName}"" is not a valid " +
                $@"SUO file with a ""{SolutionConfigStreamName}"" stream and an " +
                $@"""{ActiveConfigTokenName}"" token.", ProgramReturnCode.InvalidFileFormat);
    }

    internal class ProgramResultException : Exception
    {
        internal ProgramResultException(string message, ProgramReturnCode returnCode) 
            : base(message) => ReturnCode = returnCode;

        internal ProgramReturnCode ReturnCode { get; }
    }
}

Answer 2

1. Download DTE nuget packages : EnvDTE.8.0.2

2. Add below code

   EnvDTE.DTE DTE = Marshal.GetActiveObject("VisualStudio.DTE.15.0") as EnvDTE.DTE;

   var activeConfig = (string)DTE.Solution.Properties.Item("ActiveConfig").Value;