How do I create a DLL from my solution or project in visual studio 2012?

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VS2012

Ok, so I used to program years ago. I remember that, at one point, I created an executable or an assembly or a DLL or whatever it was called, out of my solution/project. It was something minor and not complicated. Anyway, I simply grabbed that DLL file or whatever it was and moved it to my hosting and when I went to the folder of that file, the executable executed and everything worked on the web as expected.

It's been about 4 years later and I have not used VS in a long time, much less VS2012, which I'm using now. So, how do I go about creating this DLL or assembly or whatever it was I created 4 years ago (I'm almost sure it was a dll assembly)? If anyone could point me in the right direction, I'll appreciate it.

Thanks

Posted 29-Oct-13 6:06am

TheAbominable

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OriginalGriff · Accepted Answer · 2013-10-29T06:12:00

Solution 1

You don't create a DLL from a solution (or even an EXE file) - you create these from a Project within a solution.
So a Solution may contain three Projects, which generate an EXE and two DLL files.

To create a DLL from a project is easy: Add the Project to your Solution by right clicking the solution name in the Solution Explorer pane and selecting "Add...New Project...". In the resulting dialog, select "Class Library" from the middle panel and give it an appropriate name. Press OK.

When you build the project (or solution) the DLL file will be created automatically. (You may want to add a reference to the DLL project in any EXE project in order to use the classes and methods you create)

"OriginalGriff, but where are these DLL files? As I mentioned, I just want to move whichever DLL or executable file I need to a hosting site where the user can simply go to a particular URL and the file will be executed and it'll be run.

Thanks"

If you are genuinely talking about URLs (and hence a location on the internet) then that's rather more complex - the user can't run a file on a remote computer as easily as on his own (if nothing else to stop malicious running of programs you don't want run by people you don't want to run them!). Instead, programs are run on URLs via websites - which isn't difficult to arrange, but needs a different way of thinking.

If you are just using the term "URL" wrong, and the user can navigate to the folder in which the file will be contained, then a "normal" exe file will be created in your Solution folder under a directory structure. So, if your Solution is called "MyWallet" and it is created in "D:\MyProjects", with an EXE Project "MyExe" and a DLL project "MyDLL" then:

D:\My Projects\MyWallet\MyExe\bin\Debug

Will hold the debug EXE file

D:\My Projects\MyWallet\MyExe\bin\Release

Will hoild the release version.
And

D:\My Projects\MyWallet\MyDLL\bin\Debug
D:\My Projects\MyWallet\MyDLL\bin\Release

Will hold the same for the DLL files.
If you aren't sure where these paths are in your system, then:
1) Right click your project name in VS and select "Properties".
2) Look at the "Build" tab, and near the bottom is the "Output Path".
3) Press the "Browse" button and a Windows Explore window will open letting you see the path.

Posted 29-Oct-13 6:12am

OriginalGriff

Updated 29-Oct-13 22:30pm

v2

Comments

Ranjan.D 29-Oct-13 12:56pm

5+ , Better than MSDN Doc :)

TheAbominable 30-Oct-13 5:47am

Ok, so all I want is for the user to go to www.blahblahbla.com (I already have a domain and hosting service that supports .net) and the web program/website (pages) I created, along with its functionality (which does not depend on a database) start running on the web and my friend can use the website (which IN MY COMPUTER is a solution composed of 2 projects), along with its functionality. I remember creating a project/website that had a calculator (years ago) and I simply extracted the dll or something like that and moved that file to my hosting. Please advise. THANKS!

OriginalGriff 30-Oct-13 6:06am

Use Visual Studio to publish it direct to the website - it will compile it and move the appropriate files for you.

TheAbominable 29-Oct-13 21:59pm

OriginalGriff, but where are these DLL files? As I mentioned, I just want to move whichever DLL or executable file I need to a hosting site where the user can simply go to a particular URL and the file will be executed and it'll be run.

Thanks

OriginalGriff 30-Oct-13 4:31am

Answer updated

TheAbominable 31-Oct-13 3:25am

OriginalGriff, thanks for the information on publishing directly from VS2012. I right-clicked on the web project and clicked on "Publish" and filled up all the ftp settins for my hosting site. The files were moved (bin folder, app_code folder, main pages and a couple of other files), but when I go to the website, I receive the following error:

Description: An error occurred during the processing of a configuration file required to service this request. Please review the specific error details below and modify your configuration file appropriately.

Parser Error Message: Unrecognized attribute 'targetFramework'. Note that attribute names are case-sensitive.

Source Error:

Line 9: <system.web>
Line 10: <sessionstate cookieless="true" timeout="5"> /compilation>timeout="5"></sessionState>
Line 11: <compilation strict="false" explicit="true" targetFramework="4.5" />
Line 12: <httpRuntime targetFramework="4.5" />
Line 13: </system.web>

I go my the web.config file and I do not find this targetFramework line! Where can I find it. I communicated with my hosting company and I was informed they support up to asp.net 4.0 (though I noticed they advertise up to asp.net 2.0) So, I went back to my web project, right-clicked on it, went to 'properties', and under the 'target framework' drop-down menu (below the 'assembly name' textbox), I changed that to .NET framework 2.0 (2.0, just to be safer... and I also created another folder on my hosting, where I uploaded the same project where I set the target framework to be 4.0) and moved all the files... still, the same error and the targetFramework="4.5" still appears. How do I go about fixing this issue? any ideas?

Thanks</pre>

OriginalGriff 31-Oct-13 5:11am

Did you re-publish? And have you tried cleaning first? Normally, I would expect some errors in just changing the target from 4.5 to 2.0 (it's unlikely you didn't use something from 3.5 or above) so look for compiler errors when you do the publish. If you don't get any, then either you aren't using any "advanced" features or it didn't rebuild.

TheAbominable 2-Nov-13 3:42am

Yes, thank you! Yes, I did re-publish, rebuilt, cleaned, etc. to no avail. However, I did notice that the hosting site has some IIS settings that I could tweak, I tweaked them and still problem not solved. It turns out that I was publishing to a particular folder within the root directory (purposely... to keep my apps in order) and once I published to the root directory, everything worked. However, I imagine the Web.config file, which is also in the root directory, must be the same for all apps, bummer.

OriginalGriff 2-Nov-13 5:49am

Yes - unless you can create a subdomain:
MyApp.Mydomain.com
In the same way I have
mobile.sXXXXXs.com
images.sXXXXXs.com
services.sXXXXXs.com
backup.sXXXXXs.com
and so forth - check with your hosting service, if so then it provides a way for each app to have a separate home folder. (Keeps it neater as well - you can't accidentally overwrite a different apps files)