Ive been tasked with building a solution deployer for our company.

Part of what I want to do requires me to read a solution file and find out all the information about what projects it contains, what their source safe paths are etc

I'm sure someone must have written some sort of .sln reader before now so i was wondering if anyone knew of the existance of one

Thanks

-Kris

I would propose to use regular expressions to get the information you are after. For example a regular expression like this to get all projects and their information:

(?<project>\("\{(?<prj_id>\x{8}(?:-\x{4}){3}-\x{12})\}"\) = "(?<project_name>\w+)"\, "(?<project_path>[\w\\\.-]+)", "\{(?<another_id>\x{8}(?:-\x{4}){3}-\x{12})"\}(?<project_section>(?# more funny stuff)))

I've not tested it, but it should look something like this. And on (pseudo) code side it should look something like that:

Regex regex = new regex("(?# the funny regex above)");
foreach(Match m in regex.Matches())
{
string projectName = m.Result("${project_name}");
string projectId = m.Result("${prj_id)");
string projectPath = m.Result("${project_path}");
// ...
}


to handle eventual line breaks you can use this (insert it at all places where a linebreak may occur):
(?<line_break>(?:[\x0D\x0A]{1,2}(?![\x0D\x0A])){0,1})
or rely on \n* which is a bad idea in .net

Open the .sln file in WordPad.

VS .sln files are not xml, they are plain text so you can read them, but there are not any native objects to objectify them in your code

here's a snippit of a .sln file

Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 9.00
# Visual Studio 2005
Project("{2150E333-8FDC-42A3-9474-1A3956D46DE8}") = "Solution Items", "Solution Items", "{A6C122FD-7FE5-4F70-B987-10303E990DD5}"
ProjectSection(WebsiteProperties) = preProject
Debug.AspNetCompiler.Debug = "True"
Release.AspNetCompiler.Debug = "False"
EndProjectSection
ProjectSection(SolutionItems) = preProject
Solution Items\SharpControlLibrary.dll = Solution Items\SharpControlLibrary.dll
EndProjectSection
EndProject
Project("{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}") = "SharpObjects", "Source\SharpObjects.csproj", "{2FF29CAD-BAC9-412B-B1B5-CE5B504E12FD}"
ProjectSection(WebsiteProperties) = preProject
Debug.AspNetCompiler.Debug = "True"
Release.AspNetCompiler.Debug = "False"
EndProjectSection
EndProject

Maybe I should have been more specific, I want to use code to read a .sln file to see what projects it has so i can programatically retrieve them from source safe.

I was thinking about the .*proj files, which use XML, so I assumed that .SLN files were the same. My mistake. Though I would assume you could use the same concept that XML does to pull out the information you want.

Just out of interest does anyone know why the .sln files are not in XML. Would sure make working with them a lot easier...(Gotta find a reason to get Linq to Xml in somewhere

I would propose to use regular expressions to get the information you are after. For example a regular expression like this to get all projects and their information:

(?<project>\("\{(?<prj_id>\x{8}(?:-\x{4}){3}-\x{12})\}"\) = "(?<project_name>\w+)"\, "(?<project_path>[\w\\\.-]+)", "\{(?<another_id>\x{8}(?:-\x{4}){3}-\x{12})"\}(?<project_section>(?# more funny stuff)))

I've not tested it, but it should look something like this. And on (pseudo) code side it should look something like that:

Regex regex = new regex("(?# the funny regex above)");
foreach(Match m in regex.Matches())
{
string projectName = m.Result("${project_name}");
string projectId = m.Result("${prj_id)");
string projectPath = m.Result("${project_path}");
// ...
}


to handle eventual line breaks you can use this (insert it at all places where a linebreak may occur):
(?<line_break>(?:[\x0D\x0A]{1,2}(?![\x0D\x0A])){0,1})
or rely on \n* which is a bad idea in .net

Thanks KomplexoR. I've already done the work I was just wondering if anyone knew the design reasons for it not being in XML/why it hasn't been changed/is it likely to be changed?

The fact that every version of VS (so far that I am aware of) has converted solution files from previous versions suggests it is not for backwards compatibility. I guess there is not much demand for change and so it sits at the bottom of the pile.