Parsing Visual Studio Solution files

The .NET 4.0 version of the Microsoft.Build assembly contains a SolutionParser class in the Microsoft.Build.Construction namespace that parses Visual Studio solution files.

Unfortunately this class is internal, but I've wrapped some of that functionality in a class that uses reflection to get at some common properties you might find helpful.

public class Solution
{
    //internal class SolutionParser
    //Name: Microsoft.Build.Construction.SolutionParser
    //Assembly: Microsoft.Build, Version=4.0.0.0

    static readonly Type s_SolutionParser;
    static readonly PropertyInfo s_SolutionParser_solutionReader;
    static readonly MethodInfo s_SolutionParser_parseSolution;
    static readonly PropertyInfo s_SolutionParser_projects;

    static Solution()
    {
        s_SolutionParser = Type.GetType("Microsoft.Build.Construction.SolutionParser, Microsoft.Build, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a", false, false);
        if (s_SolutionParser != null)
        {
            s_SolutionParser_solutionReader = s_SolutionParser.GetProperty("SolutionReader", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance);
            s_SolutionParser_projects = s_SolutionParser.GetProperty("Projects", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance);
            s_SolutionParser_parseSolution = s_SolutionParser.GetMethod("ParseSolution", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance);
        }
    }

    public List<SolutionProject> Projects { get; private set; }

    public Solution(string solutionFileName)
    {
        if (s_SolutionParser == null)
        {
            throw new InvalidOperationException("Can not find type 'Microsoft.Build.Construction.SolutionParser' are you missing a assembly reference to 'Microsoft.Build.dll'?");
        }
        var solutionParser = s_SolutionParser.GetConstructors(BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic).First().Invoke(null);
        using (var streamReader = new StreamReader(solutionFileName))
        {
            s_SolutionParser_solutionReader.SetValue(solutionParser, streamReader, null);
            s_SolutionParser_parseSolution.Invoke(solutionParser, null);
        }
        var projects = new List<SolutionProject>();
        var array = (Array)s_SolutionParser_projects.GetValue(solutionParser, null);
        for (int i = 0; i < array.Length; i++)
        {
            projects.Add(new SolutionProject(array.GetValue(i)));
        }
        this.Projects = projects;
    }
}

[DebuggerDisplay("{ProjectName}, {RelativePath}, {ProjectGuid}")]
public class SolutionProject
{
    static readonly Type s_ProjectInSolution;
    static readonly PropertyInfo s_ProjectInSolution_ProjectName;
    static readonly PropertyInfo s_ProjectInSolution_RelativePath;
    static readonly PropertyInfo s_ProjectInSolution_ProjectGuid;
    static readonly PropertyInfo s_ProjectInSolution_ProjectType;

    static SolutionProject()
    {
        s_ProjectInSolution = Type.GetType("Microsoft.Build.Construction.ProjectInSolution, Microsoft.Build, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a", false, false);
        if (s_ProjectInSolution != null)
        {
            s_ProjectInSolution_ProjectName = s_ProjectInSolution.GetProperty("ProjectName", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance);
            s_ProjectInSolution_RelativePath = s_ProjectInSolution.GetProperty("RelativePath", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance);
            s_ProjectInSolution_ProjectGuid = s_ProjectInSolution.GetProperty("ProjectGuid", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance);
            s_ProjectInSolution_ProjectType = s_ProjectInSolution.GetProperty("ProjectType", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance);
        }
    }

    public string ProjectName { get; private set; }
    public string RelativePath { get; private set; }
    public string ProjectGuid { get; private set; }
    public string ProjectType { get; private set; }

    public SolutionProject(object solutionProject)
    {
        this.ProjectName = s_ProjectInSolution_ProjectName.GetValue(solutionProject, null) as string;
        this.RelativePath = s_ProjectInSolution_RelativePath.GetValue(solutionProject, null) as string;
        this.ProjectGuid = s_ProjectInSolution_ProjectGuid.GetValue(solutionProject, null) as string;
        this.ProjectType = s_ProjectInSolution_ProjectType.GetValue(solutionProject, null).ToString();
    }
}

Note that you have to change your target framework to ".NET Framework 4" (not client profile) to be able to add the Microsoft.Build reference to your project.

I can't really offer you a library and my guess is there isn't one that exists out there. But I've spent a deal of time messing around with .sln files in batch editting scenarios and I've found Powershell to be a very useful tool for this task. The .SLN format is pretty simple and can be almost completely parsed with a few quick and dirty expressions. For Example

Included Project files.

gc ConsoleApplication30.sln | 
  ? { $_ -match "^Project" } | 
  %{ $_ -match ".*=(.*)$" | out-null ; $matches[1] } | 
  %{ $_.Split(",")[1].Trim().Trim('"') }

It's not always pretty, but it is an effective way to do batch processing.

we solved a similar problem of merging solutions automatically by writing a Visual Studio plugin which created a new solution then searched for *.sln file and imported them into the new one using:

dte2.Solution.AddFromFile(solutionPath, false);

Our problem was slightly different in that we wanted VS to sort out the build order for us, so we then converted any dll references to project references where possible.

We then automated this into a build process by running VS via COM automation.

This solution was a little Heath Robinson, but had the advantage that VS was doing the editing so our code was not dependant on format of the sln file. Which was helpful when we moved from VS 2005 to 2008 and again to 2010.

For what its worth I have now created a little project to read sln and proj files available on nuget:

https://www.nuget.org/packages/ByteDev.DotNet/