ProjectCollection Element (Visual Studio Templates)

Specifies the organization and contents of multi-project templates.

<VSTemplate>
   <TemplateContent>
     <ProjectCollection>

<ProjectCollection>
    <ProjectTemplateLink> ... </ProjectTemplateLink>
    <SolutionFolder> ... </SolutionFolder>
</ProjectCollection>

Attributes and Elements

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

Attributes

None.

Child Elements

Element	Description
ProjectTemplateLink	Optional element. Specifies a project in a multi-project template.
SolutionFolder	Optional element. Groups projects in multi-project templates.

Parent Elements

Element	Description
TemplateContent	Required element. Specifies the contents of the template.

Remarks

Multi-project templates act as containers for two or more projects. The ProjectCollection element is used to specify the projects to contain in the template. For more information on multi-project templates, see How to: Create Multi-Project Templates.

Example

This example shows a simple multi-project root .vstemplate file. In this example, the template contains two projects, My Windows Application and My Class Library. The ProjectName attribute on the ProjectTemplateLink element sets the name for Visual Studio to assign this project. If the ProjectName attribute does not exist, the name of the .vstemplate file is used as the project name.

<VSTemplate Version="3.0.0" Type="ProjectGroup"
    xmlns="https://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/vstemplate/2005">
    <TemplateData>
        <Name>Multi-Project Template Sample</Name>
        <Description>An example of a multi-project template</Description>
        <Icon>Icon.ico</Icon>
        <ProjectType>VisualBasic</ProjectType>
    </TemplateData>
    <TemplateContent>
        <ProjectCollection>
            <ProjectTemplateLink ProjectName="My Windows Application">
                WindowsApp\MyTemplate.vstemplate
            </ProjectTemplateLink>
            <ProjectTemplateLink ProjectName="My Class Library">
                ClassLib\MyTemplate.vstemplate
            </ProjectTemplateLink>
        </ProjectCollection>
    </TemplateContent>
</VSTemplate>

See Also

Tasks

How to: Create Multi-Project Templates

Reference

Visual Studio Template Schema Reference

Concepts

Creating Templates for Projects and Items in Visual Studio