C# – Namespace not recognized (even though it is there)

creference

I am getting this error:

The type or namespace name 'AutoMapper' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

The funny thing is that I have that reference in my project already:

ProjectThatFails

And this is my code:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using DataContract;
using SelectorDAL;
using AutoMapper;

namespace SpecimenSelect
{
    public class SpecimenSelect : ISpecimenSelect
    {
        public SpecimenSelect()
        {
            SetupMaps();
        }

        private static void SetupMaps()
        {
            Mapper.CreateMap<SpecimenDetail, SpecimenDetailContract>();
        }

The other weird thing is that I have two other projects in my solution that both use AutoMapper and are referencing the exact same AutoMapper.dll file. They both work perfectly fine.

Here is a screen shot of one:

ProjectThatWorks

and here is that code (that compiles fine):

using System.Collections.Generic;
using AutoMapper;
using DataContract;
using SelectorDAL;

namespace PatientSelect
{

    public class PatientSelect : IPatientSelect
    {
        public PatientSelect()
        {
            SetupMaps();
        }

        private void SetupMaps()
        {
            Mapper.CreateMap<Patient, PatientContract>();
            Mapper.CreateMap<OrderedTest, OrderedTestsContract>();
            Mapper.CreateMap<Gender, GenderContract>();
        }

Both references seem to have the same data on the properties page.

What am I missing?

I tried:

Restarting Visual Studio
Referencing without a using statement (ie AutoMapper.Mapper.CreateMap)
Clean and Rebuild

Any other ideas?

Best Answer

Check to make sure that your project isn't set up to use the .NET Framework 4 Client Profile.

You can check/change this by right-clicking your project (not the solution), select Properties -> Application -> Target framework. The target framework is a dropdown on that page.

This is a problem in Visual Studio (I would even go so far as to call it a bug). AutoMapper requires assemblies that are excluded from the .NET Framework 4 Client Profile. Since your project is using that version of the framework it breaks.

A similar error will propagate to the build process when the .NET Framework version for the project you are referencing is higher than the project making the reference. i.e. A project targeting 4.5 that references a project targeting 4.5.1 will give you this same error.

There needs to be a better error message when this happens because there is no rational explanation as to why it would not build as the error message tells you to reference an assembly you have clearly referenced.

Related Solutions

C# – Should ‘using’ directives be inside or outside the namespace

There is actually a (subtle) difference between the two. Imagine you have the following code in File1.cs:

// File1.cs
using System;
namespace Outer.Inner
{
    class Foo
    {
        static void Bar()
        {
            double d = Math.PI;
        }
    }
}

Now imagine that someone adds another file (File2.cs) to the project that looks like this:

// File2.cs
namespace Outer
{
    class Math
    {
    }
}

The compiler searches Outer before looking at those using directives outside the namespace, so it finds Outer.Math instead of System.Math. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?), Outer.Math has no PI member, so File1 is now broken.

This changes if you put the using inside your namespace declaration, as follows:

// File1b.cs
namespace Outer.Inner
{
    using System;
    class Foo
    {
        static void Bar()
        {
            double d = Math.PI;
        }
    }
}

Now the compiler searches System before searching Outer, finds System.Math, and all is well.

Some would argue that Math might be a bad name for a user-defined class, since there's already one in System; the point here is just that there is a difference, and it affects the maintainability of your code.

It's also interesting to note what happens if Foo is in namespace Outer, rather than Outer.Inner. In that case, adding Outer.Math in File2 breaks File1 regardless of where the using goes. This implies that the compiler searches the innermost enclosing namespace before it looks at any using directive.

Python – difference between “==” and “is”

is will return True if two variables point to the same object, == if the objects referred to by the variables are equal.

>>> a = [1, 2, 3]
>>> b = a
>>> b is a 
True
>>> b == a
True

# Make a new copy of list `a` via the slice operator, 
# and assign it to variable `b`
>>> b = a[:] 
>>> b is a
False
>>> b == a
True

In your case, the second test only works because Python caches small integer objects, which is an implementation detail. For larger integers, this does not work:

>>> 1000 is 10**3
False
>>> 1000 == 10**3
True

The same holds true for string literals:

>>> "a" is "a"
True
>>> "aa" is "a" * 2
True
>>> x = "a"
>>> "aa" is x * 2
False
>>> "aa" is intern(x*2)
True

Please see this question as well.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – Should ‘using’ directives be inside or outside the namespace

Python – difference between “==” and “is”

Related Topic