Assembly element (Visual Studio templates)

Article
01/12/2024

Specifies information about an assembly, which the template uses to add a reference of that assembly to projects.

Syntax

<Assembly> AssemblyName </Assembly>

Attributes and elements

The following sections describe attributes, child elements, and parent elements.

Attributes

None.

Child elements

None.

Parent elements

Element	Description
Reference	Specifies the assembly reference to add when the item is added to a project.

Text value

A text value is required.

This text specifies the assembly to add to a project when the item template is instantiated. This assembly name must be specified in one of the following ways:

As a full assembly name. For example:

<Assembly>
    MyAssembly, Version=1.0.3300.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a, Custom = null.
</Assembly>

As simple text reference. For example:
```
<Assembly> System </Assembly>
```

Remarks

Assembly is a required child element of Reference.

The Reference, References, and Assembly elements can only be used in .vstemplate files that have a Type attribute value of Item.

Example

The following example illustrates the TemplateContent element of an item template. This XML adds references to the System.dll and System.Data.dll assemblies.

<TemplateContent>
    <References>
        <Reference>
            <Assembly>
                System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089
            </Assembly>
        </Reference>
        <Reference>
            <Assembly>
                System.Data, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089
            </Assembly>
        </Reference>
    </References>
    ...
</TemplateContent>

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