Question

Is it possible to create an intellisense-like link to a class / class property / class method in a simple comment in Visual Studio 2010 (doing ASP.NET MVC 3 project but i guess that doesn’t really matter)? Are there any free plugins for this functionality?

Let’s say I have this code:

//Blahblahblah
//As you can see on its definition - [SomeClass.SomeProperty] - blahblahblah
//blahblahblah
SomeInstanceOfSomeClass.CallingSomethingUsingSomeProperty(42);

I want to click on [TableModelClass] which will either open new tab or switch to already opened one and scroll automatically to the definition of class/method/etc., as if you typed F12 on it anywhere else outside comments.

I suspect there must be some VS plugins out there in the Internet…been googling for a while…

Answer 1

You can’t add a link to another type.method that will actually appear as a clickable link in your code.

However, you can use XML documentation comments to add a link to another type/method that will appear as a clickable link in the Object Browser, in the generated XML documentation file, or in any other documentation that you might generate from these comments using tools like Sandcastle.

The syntax is to use either the <see> or <seealso> tag, and specify the type/method you want to link to as the cref attribute.

For example:

/// <summary>This is a helper method to add two integer values together.
/// <para>
/// <see cref="System.Console.WriteLine(System.Int32)"/> for information
/// about how to display the results.
/// </para>
/// <seealso cref="MyClass.Subtract"/>
/// </summary>
public static int AddIntegers(int a, int b)
{
    return (a + b);
}