Programmatically publish web application

I'm trying to write a visual studio extension that allows me to publish multiple web applications in a solution, similar to using the one-click publish feature on all the projects.

DTE2 service = (DTE2)this.GetService(typeof(DTE));
Projects projects = service.Solution.Projects;
SolutionBuild2 build = (SolutionBuild2)service.Solution.SolutionBuild;

foreach (Project project in projects)
{
   build.PublishProject("Release", project.UniqueName, true);
}

When I try to run this code, the only result in the output window is this:

Error: Object reference not set to an instance of an object开发者_C百科.
========== Publish: 0 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========

... which doesn't tell me much. Is there a way to find out what's going wrong?

I also see there an interface IVsPublishableProjectCfg, but there doesn't seem to be any examples of how to use it.

Is there another way to programmatically publish web applications to a certain directory, similar to how the one-click publish feature works?

---

An alternate way to do this is to simulate clicking of the right-click "Publish" context menu item in Solution explorer, as in this similar question: DTE.ExecuteCommand and wait

Note that, as this is an asynchronous command, you will need to build in logic to tap into the post-publish events to iterate over your collection of projects (some detail on this is shown in one of the included answers).

---

Use the msbuild.exe executable (which is how you're building anyway), pass your sln file as the project argument, and target the "Publish" target.

msbuild SlnFolders.sln /t:Publish

You can declare some properties in the command line or you can declare them statically using your own .targets file; reference this .targets file in your .csproj.

<Import Project="MyPublishCustomizations.targets" />

The contents of the .targets file might look like this:

<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
    <Target Name="Publish">
    </Target>
    <!-- or .. -->
    <Target Name="CustomPublish" BeforeTargets="Publish">
    </Target>
</Project>

.. the <Target ..> XML could then have in it ..

<PropertyGroup>
    <MyCustomPath>\\our_server\our_share</MyCustomPath>
</PropertyGroup>
<Copy SourceFiles="$(OutDir)\*" DestinationFiles="$(MyCustomPath)" />

You can then define any other MSBuild tasks, even shell commands with <Exec ..>.

More generally on MSBuild here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd393573.aspx

Also if you insist on writing your publish logic in C#, you might consider the path described above and define a custom MSBuild task, i.e.

<ExecuteMyCustomTaskDefinedInCSharp ParameterA="Hello" ParameterB="World" />

Learn how here.

---

Basically, it boils down to calling msbuild somehow like this:

msbuild.exe "MyProject.csproj" /p:PublishProfile="MyPublishProfile.pubxml" /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:VisualStudioVersion="14.0"

I have written a PowerShell cmdlet for this, which I can call from the NuGet package manager console.