'Item template for shared project in Visual Studio

I've created a custom item template in Visual Studio for a class. I've done all the required steps and the template can be added as a new item in every project type except for the "Shared Project" type. It doesn't show in the list of choices when adding a new item. My goal is to use this template for new classes in the Shared Project.

Here is the .xml file for my template...

<VSTemplate Version="3.0.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/vstemplate/2005" Type="Item">
  <TemplateData>
    <DefaultName>Class_ODBC.cs</DefaultName>
    <Name>Class_ODBC</Name>
    <Description>Template for a class using ODBC and System.Data</Description>
    <ProjectType>CSharp</ProjectType>
    <SortOrder>10</SortOrder>
    <Icon>__TemplateIcon.ico</Icon>
    <TemplateGroupID>WinRT-Managed</TemplateGroupID>
  </TemplateData>
  <TemplateContent>
    <References />
    <ProjectItem SubType="" TargetFileName="$fileinputname$.cs" ReplaceParameters="true">Class_ODBC.cs</ProjectItem>
  </TemplateContent>
</VSTemplate>

And the .cs file for the template itself...

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.Odbc;
using System.Text;

namespace %rootnamespace%
{
    class %safeitemname%
    {
    #region Fields

    #endregion
    #region Constructors

    #endregion
    #region Methods

    #endregion
    #region Events/Handlers

    #endregion
    #region Properties

    #endregion
    }
#region Exceptions

#endregion
}

Any help is greatly appreciated.

c++sharpvisual-studiotemplatesvisual-studio-2015


Solution 1:[1]

I was trying to achieve the same, documentation didn't provide much help but checked one of the already provided templates that is available within a Shared project and found that it can be done through the <AppliesTo> element in the vstemplate. I'm not sure why VS highlights the tag as incorrect for the schema, as MSDN clearly states it's valid

The final result looks like this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<VSTemplate Version="3.0.0" Type="Item" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/vstemplate/2005" xmlns:sdk="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/vstemplate-sdkextension/2010">
  <TemplateData>
    <Name>Custom ViewModel</Name>
    <Description>Custom ViewModel</Description>
    <Icon>MyViewModelTemplate.ico</Icon>
    <TemplateID>6dde10d5-17ae-4cf1-9880-dc448eca638d</TemplateID>
    <TemplateGroupID>WinRT-Managed</TemplateGroupID>
    <AppliesTo>CSharp</AppliesTo>
    <ProjectType>CSharp</ProjectType>
    <SortOrder>1</SortOrder>
    <RequiredFrameworkVersion>4.5</RequiredFrameworkVersion>
    <NumberOfParentCategoriesToRollUp>1</NumberOfParentCategoriesToRollUp>
    <DefaultName>ViewModel.cs</DefaultName>
    <TargetPlatformName>Windows</TargetPlatformName>
    <RequiredPlatformVersion>8</RequiredPlatformVersion>
  </TemplateData>
  <TemplateContent>
    <ProjectItem SubType="Code"  TargetFileName="$fileinputname$.cs" ReplaceParameters="true">Class.cs</ProjectItem>
  </TemplateContent>
</VSTemplate>

Hope this helps.

Solution 2:[2]

After digging around in Visual Studio's installed templates, I discovered that to add a template to a sub-category, such as Shared Project under C#, one needs to create a folder with the same name as the sub-category and place the template in that folder.

The "AppliesTo" tag seems to only apply to the top-level categories.

Solution 3:[3]

The issue I discovered is that you need to have two tags:

<AppliesTo>CSharp</AppliesTo>
<TemplateID>YourTemplate.ID</TemplateID>

The AppliesTo tag by itself did not work. Adding the TemplateID did the trick, even though it's not required for non-shared projects.

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1 Diego Malanij
Solution 2
Solution 3 Russell Bearden

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