How to: Add and Remove Host Items in an Add-in Project

Article
11/16/2012

You add host items to add-in projects when developers create items in the host application to contain objects. For example, a developer might add a document item to contain pages, or a form item to contain controls. When you add a host item to the add-in project, the developer can use it to customize that item. For more information, see Dynamically Creating and Modifying Host Items and Host Objects in an Add-in Project.

To add and remove host items, get the host adapter of the Visual Studio Tools for Applications IDE. You can then use the host adapter to access a collection of project host items. For more information, see Dynamically Creating and Modifying Host Items and Host Objects in an Add-in Project.

The code used in these procedures is taken from the VstaDesignTimeIntegration.cs file of the ShapeAppDynamicProgrammingModelCSharp sample. For more information, see How to: Build and Run the ShapeAppDynamicProgrammingModelCSharp Sample.

To add a host item to the project

Get the host adapter by using the Extender property of the Project instance.

IVstaHostAdapter hostAdapter = 
    (IVstaHostAdapter)project.get_Extender("VSTAHostAdapter2007");

Call the AddProjectHostItem method of the ProjectHostItemCollection.

The following method adds a host item that represents a drawing to a project in the ShapeApp sample application. This method uses the ShapeApp.Drawing object that is passed into the method to name the host item class.

private void AddDrawingProjectHostItem(ShapeApp.Drawing drawing)
{
    this.hostAdapter.ProjectHostItems.AddProjectHostItem(
        drawing.Name, 
        "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.Samples.ShapeApp.DrawingEntryPoint",
        "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.Runtime.IEntryPoint",
        drawing.Name,
        this.hostItemTemplatesPath + @"\CSharp\drawing");
}

To remove a host item from a project

Get the host adapter by using the Extender property of the Project instance.

IVstaHostAdapter hostAdapter = 
    (IVstaHostAdapter)project.get_Extender("VSTAHostAdapter2007");

Call the RemoveProjectHostItem method of the ProjectHostItemCollection.

The following method removes a host item that represents a drawing from a project in the ShapeApp sample application. This method uses the Cookie property of the ShapeApp.Drawing object that is passed into the method to identify the drawing to remove.
```
private void RemoveDrawingProjectHostItem(ShapeApp.Drawing drawing)
{
    IVstaProjectHostItem item = 
        this.hostAdapter.ProjectHostItems[drawing.Cookie];     
    this.hostAdapter.ProjectHostItems.RemoveProjectHostItem(item);
}
```

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How to: Add and Remove Host Items in an Add-in Project

To add a host item to the project

To remove a host item from a project

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