asp:Feature
ASP.NET VERSIONS: 2.0
ASP.NET 2.0 Folder Structure
The ASP.NET Folder Structure Revisited
By Joydip Kanjilal
ASP.NET 2.0 provides a lot of awesome features that make Web application development in the .NET environment amazingly simple and flexible. To that end, ASP.NET 2.0 comes with a lot of pre-defined files and folders that can be used for specific types of content. This article briefly discusses these folders and their applicability in ASP.NET 2.0. The folders we ll cover are:
- App_Code
- App_Themes
- App_Data
- App_GlobalResources
- App_LocalResources
- App_WebReferences
- App_Browsers
- Bin
Let us now understand the purpose of each of these folders.
App_Code
This is a folder that contains the utility classes and business objects. It houses the interfaces, classes, .wsdl files, typed datasets, etc. You can place your reusable classes and interfaces here. The code in this folder is available to the entire application. Note that this folder contains all code files except the Web page s code-behind file. At run time, the ASP.NET runtime dynamically compiles the contents of this folder, creates an assembly, and places the same in the application s Bin folder.
App_Themes
This folder contains the application s themes to apply consistent visual styles for the entire application.
App_Data
This folder contains the application s data. Actually, it contains the application s local database. This can in turn be in XML, MDF, text, etc. formats.
App_GlobalResources
To facilitate localization, ASP.NET 2.0 introduced the App_GlobalResources global folder that can be used to store any global resources, i.e., .resx and .resources files. These resources can in turn be in the form of a resource, image, text, etc. files. The resources placed here can be accessed by your entire application.
App_LocalResources
This folder contains resources that are specific to a particular Web page, i.e., local resources or resources that are local to a particular Web page.
App_WebReferences
This folder is the same as the WebReferences folder that we used in the earlier versions of ASP.NET. You can place here your Web references, proxy classes, schemas, discovery document files, and other files associated with a Web service that your application connects to and makes use of.
App_Browsers
This folder holds browser files. The browser files have .browser extensions. These files can be used by the ASP.NET runtime environment to identity a particular browser and determine its capabilities.
Bin
This folder contains the compiled assemblies or the dynamic linked library files for the application. In ASP.NET 2.0, you can deploy your assemblies in the application s bin directory, just like you did with ASP.NET 1.x.
Conclusion
This article briefly covered the folder structure of ASP.NET 2.0 and discussed each folder s purpose. Please send me your comments. Happy reading!
Working extensively in Microsoft technologies for more than 10 years, Joydip Kanjilal is an MVP and a Senior Technical Leader in the Design and Architecture team for a reputed company in a Hyderabad, India. His programming skills include C, C++, Java, C#, VB, VC++, ASP.NET, XML, UML, and Design patterns. He has worked with .NET and C# for more than five years. Reach Joydip at mailto:[email protected] or at his blog at: http://aspadvice.com/blogs/joydip/.
