Archive for the ‘Visual Studio’ Category

Invalid token ‘void’ in class, struct, or interface member declaration

EDIT :

After finishing this post I ran into all sorts of other strange issues and restarted using a Web Appliction instead of a plain old Website.  Between IntelliSense not showing any classes, to project reference issues, I couldn’t figured it out in time.  I’m sure there’s a way, I just had to move on.  So maybe this ramble below will be helpful for someone.

EF

Just ran into something quirky with Visual Studio 2008’s new ADO.NET Entity Data Model wizard.  While working on an ASP.NET 3.5 website ( not a codebehind web application ) I was trying to get the ADO.NET Entity Data model wizard to work with MySQL and ran into a probable Visual Studio bug.  To sum up the issue, if you are going to add a new edmx to your project, do NOT save it to the App_Code folder initially.  Put it in your root folder, compile your project, then move the edmx where you’d like.

Assuming you’ve already created your ASP.NET Website project, here’s how you reproduce this issue.

Right click your project and left click ‘Add New Item’

Right click your project, left click Add New Item

Add New Item

Select ADO.NET Entity Data Model, name it, select your language of preference

New ADO.NET Entity Data Model

ADO.NET Entity Data Model

Click Yes to the ‘Store in App_Code’ prompt

Place your edmx in App_Code folder

Place file in 'App_Code' folder

Complete the new Entity Data Model wizard

See this tutorial if you have not done this before

Compile project after completing wizard

Invalid token 'void' in class, struct, or interface member declaration

Invalid token 'void' in class, struct, or interface member declaration

At this point your project should have a new.edmx file located inside of the App_Code folder, but the project won’t build without failing.  If you are stuck in this predicament, follow this workaround.

Move .edmx to root folder and rebuild

Move edmx to root and recompile, no errors!

WORKAROUND : move edmx to root folder, then recompile

After moving your edmx file to the root folder you should be able to compile without problem.  Assuming this solves your problem, you should be able to move your edmx file to the App_Code folder without problem.  Seems like an initial compile problem.

Find out why Visual Studio’s publish fails

Have you ever had Visual Studio tell you your web application publish failed, but never gives you a reason why?  You’re not alone.  I’ve been putting off looking into this issue on a project and just found a way to get my answer right away.

Visual Studio 2008's Publish Failed message

Visual Studio 2008's Publish Failed message

Here’s what you should do inside of Visual Studio to find out why your publish failed.

  1. Click the Tools menu > then Options to bring up the Options dialog.
  2. Expand ‘Projects and Solutions’ on the left and click General
  3. On General, click ‘Show Output window when build starts’
  4. Now click on ‘Build and Run’ in the left tree
  5. Next select a value from the ‘MSBuild project build output verbosity’ drop down menu
  6. OK your way back to the main Visual Studio window
  7. The next time you Build or Publish your project, you should see the Output panel pop up.  If your publish is still failing, the answer will live inside the Output panel

Here’s a visual walkthrough of these instructions.

Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > General

Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > General

Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > Build and Run

Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > Build and Run

Visual Studio's Output Panel

Visual Studio's Output Panel