References Element (Visual Studio Templates)

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2015. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

Groups the assembly references that the template adds to projects.

<VSTemplate>
<TemplateContent>
<References>

Syntax

<References>  
    <Reference>... </Reference>  
    <Reference>... </Reference>  
    ...  
</References>  

Attributes and Elements

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

Attributes

None.

Child Elements

Element Description
Reference Required element.

Specifies the assembly reference to add when the item is added to a project. There must be one or more Reference elements in a References element.

Parent Elements

Element Description
TemplateContent Specifies the contents of the template.

Remarks

References is an optional child element of TemplateContent.

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>  

See Also

Visual Studio Template Schema Reference
Creating Project and Item Templates