Why does moving classes into a new folder in Visual Studio break things?

Question

I have an ASP.NET application with three areas. In the root of the application is a Models folder containing a hodgepodge of classes, including two DataContexts, some Repository classes, some ViewModel classes, some helper classes, and some business logic classes.

I'd like to create subfolders for each of these subcategories and move the associated files into the appropriate subfolder. However, I am noticing that this is breaking things. For example, if I move one of the DataContexts to a DataContext subfolder in the Models folder, I find that the code in the repositories can no longer see the DataContext type.

Which must mean that the Models folder has special meaning to the system. What am I missing here? Is there some way to "sensitize" the subfolders so that the other code can still see the implemented classes and namespaces? Or am I going about this the wrong way?

Answer 1

Probably a namespacing issue? The model folder has no special meaning.

The ASP.NET MVC team has said something like before:

"The only reason the model folder exists is because people kept asking us where to put our model classes" ;)