Code Reusability

Question

Our company provides custom HR software for our client customers. One of our products is an assessment that is commonly used in many of the different applications. I have all of the classess created for the report displayed and want to make development faster. Instead of creating all of the classes each time, I thought I would save

• either to a project and then add that project to other solutions,
• or I would create a Class Library that I can then use by simply adding the reference to it

The thing is there are methods that pull information from multiple databases used for the report that are in the classes. I generally have the connection strings in the web.config so if it is a Class Library can it pull the info from the web.config? If I make it as a project does the web.config of the solution need to hold these connection strings or would it be part of this project.

Speaking of multiple projects in a solution, when it comes to Job Applicant Tracking, there are some clients that need certain items and others that do not. For example Federal Contractors must ask a question on Veteran Status and another on Disability Status that companies that are not Federal Contractors cannot ask, another one is some companies want to have an interface with a background vendor built into the system, and some need DOT information asked. So I would like to make some projects for the options that only contain these parts so I can just add the needed parts to the solution for our customers. If I do that can the Views be in the option projects or do they need to be part of the main project?

Thanks for any help and ideas

Answer 1

Classes that are shared across projects should be a class library. The class library is simply a part of the main project and has access to the web.config file just like any code in the main project.

Your second question is hard to answer. A common solution is role based authorization. Application user's in the Federal Contractors role/claim can ask the Veteran Status and and Disability Status question/answer because it is a rule that you set up based on their role/claim.