Reference element (Visual Studio templates)

Article
11/04/2016

Applies to: Visual Studio Visual Studio for Mac

Note

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

Syntax

<Reference>
    <Assembly> ... </Assembly>
</Reference>

Attributes and elements

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

Attributes

None.

Child elements

Element	Description
Assembly	Required element. Specifies information about an assembly, which the template uses to add a reference of that assembly to projects. There must be one `Assembly` element in every `Reference` element.

Parent elements

Element	Description
References	Groups the assembly references that the template adds to projects.

Remarks

Reference is a required child element of References.

The Reference and References 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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