Exposing code-behind classes to app_code .cs files

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C#

ASP.NET

Visual-Studio

VS2010

Hi All,

I decided to post on this site as it seems to be the friendliest and most down to earth of all the forums. I wonder if anyone can help me - I spent all yesterday searching for the answer to no avail!

I have nearly finished a VS2010 Website Project using asp.net and c#. I have no problem at all seeing classes/methods/fields defined in app_code/whatever.cs pages from my aspx.cs pages but if I define a class in the aspx.cs page, I can't see it from the app_code/whatever.cs page. I've messed about with namespaces, usings and made sure everything is as public as possible and have proven that the same class put in another .cs page in app_code can be seen by app_code/whatever.cs - it's only when put the class into the aspx.cs area that intellisense can't see it. (I'm getting "The type or namespace name 'xxxxx' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or assembly reference)). The aspx.cs page sits underneath the .aspx file in solution explorer. I tried moving the whatever.cs file from the app_code folder to root and that didn't help.

The closest I have found to an answer on the internet is that I should have created a Web Application instead of a Website and then I would be able to see the classes between aspx.cs and .cs pages in both directions.

So, before I start posting any code, could anyone tell me if this last point is true? Apologies if this is really obvious to everyone - maybe I have misunderstood the way data is allowed to flow in a website project - I'm new to all of this so there may be fundamental gaps in my knowledge.....but I've managed to build 99% of it so just need help with the remaining 1%!

If you guys feel however that I should be able to expose aspx.cs page classes to the app_code/ classes in a website project then I will post code and explain in more detail why I'm trying to do this.

To avoid being shouted at with "this question has been answered before", can I just clarify that there are loads of posts where people can't see classes defined in app_code from the code behind page ..... my problem is the other way round, I really have looked everywhere!

Many thanks

Pierreluigi