Reading the list of References from csproj files

Question

Does anyone know of a way to programmatically read the list of References in a VS2008 csproj file? MSBuild does not appear to support this functionality. I\'m trying to re

Answer 1

Building on @Pavel Minaev's answer, this is what worked for me (notice the added .Attributes line to read the Include attribute)

XNamespace msbuild = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003";
    XDocument projDefinition = XDocument.Load(@"D:\SomeProject.csproj");
    IEnumerable<string> references = projDefinition
        .Element(msbuild + "Project")
        .Elements(msbuild + "ItemGroup")
        .Elements(msbuild + "Reference")
        .Attributes("Include")    // This is where the reference is mentioned       
        .Select(refElem => refElem.Value);
    foreach (string reference in references)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(reference);
    }

Answer 2

Based on @PavelMinaev's answer, I also added the "HintPath" Element to the output. I write the string array "references" to a ".txt" file.

XNamespace msbuild = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003";
            XDocument projDefinition = XDocument.Load(@"C:\DynamicsFieldsSite.csproj");
            var references = projDefinition
                .Element(msbuild + "Project")
                .Elements(msbuild + "ItemGroup")
                .Elements(msbuild + "Reference")
                .Select(refElem => (refElem.Attribute("Include") == null ? "" : refElem.Attribute("Include").Value) + "\n" + (refElem.Element(msbuild + "HintPath") == null ? "" : refElem.Element(msbuild + "HintPath").Value) + "\n");
            File.WriteAllLines(@"C:\References.txt", references);

Answer 3

The XPath should be /Project/ItemGroup/Reference, and you have forgot the namespace. I'd just use XLINQ - dealing with namespaces in XPathNavigator is rather messy. So:

    XNamespace msbuild = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003";
    XDocument projDefinition = XDocument.Load(fullProjectPath);
    IEnumerable<string> references = projDefinition
        .Element(msbuild + "Project")
        .Elements(msbuild + "ItemGroup")
        .Elements(msbuild + "Reference")
        .Select(refElem => refElem.Value);
    foreach (string reference in references)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(reference);
    }