Getting Started - Project Templates Installation

The Ed-Fi Alliance provides a Visual Studio extension that contains project templates for creating Composites, Ed-Fi Extensions, and Profiles. The Visual Studio extension is supported by both Visual Studio 2015, and Visual Studio 2017. Installing the extension will be useful for many customization needs.

This section describes how to install the Project Templates. It assumes you have Visual Studio installed, and have successfully installed the ODS / API on a development machine per the instructions in the Getting Started - Installation Steps section of this documentation. 

The steps can be summarized as:

Detail on each step follows.

Step 1. Uninstall Any Previous Versions

Verify that there are no previous versions of the templates installed under Tools > Extensions and Updates > Templates.

If you have previously installed the extension, you will want to confirm that the previous templates have been removed from the Visual Studio Project Templates folder on your machine. To determine the location of the Visual Studio Project Templates folder on your system:

• Open Visual Studio and go to Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > Locations. 
• Get the value in the User project templates locations. The default location is C:\Users\[User]\Documents\Visual Studio 2015\Templates\ProjectTemplates.

Ensure the previous versions of the templates are not present.

Step 2. Download the Ed-Fi Visual Studio Extension

Download the Ed-Fi Visual Studio Extension from the download panel on the right, or from the Downloads section of this documentation.

Step 3. Close Visual Studio

Ensure you close all instances of Visual Studio.

Step 4. Install the Templates

Double-click the downloaded EdFi.ProjectTemplates.Installer.vsix file and install the templates.

Step 5. Verify Install

Verify that the extension installed under Tools > Extensions and Updates > Templates.

Verify that the templates are available under File > New > Project.

Next Steps

Now that you've installed the templates, you can find information on how to use them in the following articles:

• How To: Add API Composites to the Ed-Fi ODS / API Solution
• How To: Add Profiles to the Ed-Fi ODS / API Solution
• How To: Extend the Ed-Fi ODS / API - Student Transportation Example